Description
Book SynopsisDespite the persistence of the fraternal form of association in guilds, trade unions, and political associations, as well as in fraternal social organizations, scholars have often ignored its importance as a cultural and social theme. This provocative volume helps to redress that neglect. Tracing the development of fraternalism from early modern western Europe through eighteenth-century Britain to nineteenth-century America, Mary Ann Clawson shows how white males came to use fraternal organizations to resolve troubling questions about relations between the sexes and between classes: American fraternalism in the 1800s created bonds of loyalty across class lines and made gender and race primary categories of collective identity.
British men had symbolically become stone masons to express their commitment to the emerging market economy and to the social value of craft labor. Clawson points out that American fraternalism fulfilled similar purposes, as fraternal organizations reco
Table of Contents
*FrontMatter, pg. i*CONTENTS, pg. v*ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, pg. vii*INTRODUCTION. Fraternalism as a Social Form, pg. 3*1. The Fraternal Model, pg. 21*2. The Craftsman as Hero, pg. 53*3. Was the Lodge a Working-Class Institution?, pg. 87*4. Fraternal Orders in Nineteenth-Century America, pg. 111*5. Social Fraternalism and the Artisanal Ideal, pg. 145*6. The Rise of the Women's Auxiliary, pg. 178*7. The Business of Brotherhood, pg. 211*CONCLUSION, pg. 243*INDEX, pg. 265
