‘Knitting together all Parts of the Vast Structure of Society’: care work, philanthropy and urban welfare in Scotland, c 1720 c 1840

Bujokova, Eliska (2024) ‘Knitting together all Parts of the Vast Structure of Society’: care work, philanthropy and urban welfare in Scotland, c 1720 c 1840. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

This thesis studies care in the context of urban Scotland between 1720s and 1840s. It treats care as a concept, a resource and an economic phenomenon, as well as a practice and a form of labour. In this thesis, care is contextualised by its socio-economic and political milieus. The backdrop of this research is Scotland’s industrialisation and imperial expansion that shaped the nation’s socio-economic and demographic structures, which contributed to the transformation of the nation’s regimes of care. I therefore situate care at the centre of contemporary debates around welfare and social policy. This thesis speaks to the economic histories of Scottish (and British) industrialisation that have thus far not included care and social reproduction as causative factors. It contributes to the field of new histories of labour; surveying the ways changing socio-economic relations reshaped the labours of care. My focus is primarily on commodified forms of care work as opposed to its unpaid forms, aiming to point out the vastness of the care market. As such, I view care work mediated through the market or performed inside institutions such as voluntary hospitals and orphanages. Through this focus, I highlight the nature of care work as an occupation or a form of entrepreneurship. With the continued association between care and the unpaid work of women within the home, gender plays an important role in this analysis, largely inspired by the work of feminist economics. I show that whilst care work in eighteenth-century Scotland was feminised, men performed a lot of it too. Moreover, much care work was commodified and performed alongside other forms of paid work. Supporting new research on gender and work, I argue that familial caring responsibilities did not shape women’s labour force participation, instead being distributed amongst available sources of provision, paid and unpaid. Summarily, accounting for economic histories of care is necessary for the understanding of all economic processes, as well as their gendering.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Subjects: D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain; H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform
• Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities
• Supervisor's Name: Shepard, Professor Alex, MacLeod, Dr. Catriona and Nenadic, Professor Stana
• Date of Award: 2024
• Depositing User: Theses Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:2024-84543
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 05 Sep 2024 09:51
• Last Modified: 05 Sep 2024 09:51
• Thesis DOI: 10.5525/gla.thesis.84543
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/84543