Combining the perspectives of anthropology and social history, Professor Reddy traces the transition from precapitalist to capitalist culture in the French textile industry from 1750 to 1900. He shows how and why a new conception of the social order based on the idea of the market began to emerge, and examines the attendant political and social conflict. Focusing on the northern regional centres in France which led the movement toward mechanisation, the author - employs the methods of cultural anthropology to find that even by 1900 French textile labourers had failed to develop a social identity commensurate with the idea of wage labour. This discovery leads him to a critique of the market idea that suggests radical and prevalent interpretations of the social history of industrialisation as well as of the concept of ‘class consciousness’.

William M. Reddy

Career and research information

I received all my degrees (B.A., M.A., Ph.D.) from the University of Chicago, finishing there in 1974; after a year at the School of Social Science of the Institute for Advanced Study, and a post-doc in the Department of Psychology and Social Relations at Harvard, I came to Duke in 1977. I have been awarded, among others, Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships, brief visiting fellowships at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, and fellowship years at the National Humanities Center and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California.

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