GENTRIFICATION AND THE ENTERPRISE CULTURE by F. M. L. Thompson ( 9780199243303 )

Item Details

Title:

GENTRIFICATION AND THE ENTERPRISE CULTURE
BRITAIN 1780-1980

By:

Format:

Hardback

List price:	£91.00
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ISBN 10:

0199243301

ISBN 13:

9780199243303

Publisher:

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Pub. date:

5 April, 2001

Pages:

210

Description:

In this book F. M. L. Thompson, with his typical blend of elegance and erudition, makes an incisive contribution to the longstanding debate over gentrification and entrepreneurialism in Britain. Professor Thompson provides an expert analysis of the links between economic performance and the penetration of industrial wealth into landed society.

Synopsis:

The long-running debate on Britain's apparent economic decline in the last 120 years (not exactly noticeable in the living standards of ordinary people, which have risen enormously in that time) has generated a large economic and statistical literature and a great deal of heat in rival social and cultural explanations. The 'decline' has been confidently attributed to the permeation of the business elite by the anti-industrial and anti-commercial attitudes communicated by public schools and the old universities through their propagation of aristocratic and gentry values; and the readiness of the buiness elite to be thus permeated has been ascribed to the persistent tendency of new men of wealth to transform themselves into landed gentlemen. There have been equally confident claims to have overturned this traditional view that wealthy merchants and industrialists sought to acquire landed estates and country houses, and to have established that 'gentlemanly values' were in fact economically advantageous to Britain because she never was a primarily industrial economy.In this book, Professor Thompson subjects these interpretations to the test of the actual evidence, and firmly re-establishes the conventional wisdom on the characteristic desire of new money to acquire land and a place in the country, an aspiration which continues to be manifest today. At the same time, he shows that aristocratic and gentry cultures have not by any means been consistently anti-industrial or anti-business, and that many of the businessmen-turned-landowners have in fact not turned their backs on industry, but have founded business dynasties. Gentrification has indeed occurred ona large scale over the last two hundred years, but has had no discernible effects one way or the other on Britain' economic performance.

Illustrations:

1 table

Publication:

Imprint:

Oxford University Press

Returns:

Non-returnable

Some other items by this author:

ENGLISH LANDED SOCIETY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY