Seit Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts förderte ein wachsendes Bedürfnis nach gesellschaftlicher Selbstbeobachtung die Entstehung und Popularisierung vielgestaltiger soziographischer Formate. Skizzen, ...Reiseberichte, Sozialromane und Karikaturen feierten auf einem zunehmend kommerzialisierten Kunst- und Literaturmarkt beachtliche Erfolge und nahmen Orte, Typen, Gewohnheiten und Moden der sich ausdifferenzierenden sozialen Welt unter die Lupe. Die Beiträge des Bandes untersuchen, wie ethnographisch-soziologisches Wissen in verschiedenen medialen Formaten hergestellt wurde - und betrachten diese als Agenten eines sich formierenden sozialwissenschaftlichen Diskurses in Europa und darüber hinaus.
This article highlights the connections between the production of folkloristic knowledge and expanding print markets in mid-nineteenth-century Europe. Looking at folkloristic writings from diverse ...geographical and social contexts, the article primarily focuses on the diverse socio-political and aesthetic sensitivities attached to the increased public interest in popular traditions. While Cecilia Böhl de Faber promoted a strongly idealizing and conservative view of the lower classes of the Spanish countryside, Joseph Mainzer’s works published in the French press addressed the creative potential of collective singing in urban contexts, and Anton Glassbrenner endeavoured to illustrate the democratic spirit of the lower classes in Berlin. The article shows that although all three authors promoted the exoticization and aestheticization of the ostensibly “authentic” habits, tales, and speaking modes of “the folk”, their views on the role of the lower classes within the social structure differed significantly. Keeping in mind the importance of mass media in enforcing collective conceptions of reality and political identity throughout the nineteenth century, this article creates new perspectives on the production of folkloristic knowledge within a broad socio-medial and political context.
This article analyzes how the series ‘London Horrors’ documented the living conditions of the underprivileged sections of the urban population for the Morning Post (1772-1937). Its writer, John ...Hollingshead (1827-1904), did not only aim to provide a testimonial on the effects of nineteenth-century social transformations but also to stimulate societal reflection among a growing reading public. Looking at ‘London Horrors’ as an early example of social research, this article examines the series’ narrative schemes, Hollingshead’s methodological reflections, and the strategies he employs to raise political awareness among his audience. The expanding and commercializing market of journals and magazines of the nineteenth century, the article argues, constituted an important context for the multi-genre evolution of social thought.
This paper explores the ethnographic qualities of nineteenth-century sociographic journalism. It examines texts published in English, French, and Spanish journals, magazines, and serials, which deal ...with social behaviours, types, and institutions of the modernizing societies. By focusing on the representational techniques with which these 'social sketches' approach the social world and the ways the authors reflect on ethnographic authority and representation, this paper aims at situating early journalism among the founding genres of ethnography and social study.
Around the mid-nineteenth century, the investigative reportage consolidated as a journalistic genre that introduced early social debates into the commercial periodical. This article analyzes how John ...Hollingshead's series 'London Horrors' (1861) and comparable journalistic reports such as 'Labour and the Poor' (1849-1850) produced testimonials on the housing and working conditions of the underprivileged urbanites. It shows how social reporters like Hollingshead made an unknown social sphere understandable to a growing middle-class audience of newspapers by using the narrative strategies of reformist surveys and political tracts on the one hand, and the semi-fictional, audience-oriented sketch on the other. This kind of writing entailed combining particularising, at times sensationalist accounts of social situations with large-scale analyses, the presentation of diverse types of data (demographic numbers, inventories, eyewitness testimonies, biographic stories), and political commentary. Examining 'London Horrors' from the perspectives of social science history and literary/media studies, the article contends that investigative journalism on an expanding print market acted as an intermediary between literary entertainment, public engagement, and social research.
This article investigates the multiple functions of a periodical as a format of knowledge produced by and for the educated population of a middle-sized Spanish town. Situated between media and ...knowledge history, the purpose of this study is twofold: First, it discusses the contents and editorial circumstances of La Floresta Andaluza. Secondly, it looks into the connections between media, knowledge, space, and social configurations by investigating the periodical as an agent of public communication that addresses (and makes up) its audience as a knowledge milieu and politically responsible group. As a consequence, the article contributes to a new understanding of media history from the periphery and explores the relationships between editorial activities, the production of knowledge, and sociopolitical transformations in nineteenth-century Spain.
Nineteenth-century urbanization and industrialization in western Europe have clearly contributed to the formation of societal knowledge and self-reflexive cultural iconographies. Especially from the ...1820s onwards, one major context for discussing the social and cultural diversity of the city and concomitant socio-political tensions was the emerging market of journals and magazines. Based upon the writings of two exemplary authors, this article investigates with which techniques and metaphors nineteenth-century journalistic sketches depicted urban sociability and conditions. Furthermore, it reflects on how not only the ever more differentiating urban environments but also the proximity of different networks and institutions of knowledge encouraged the refinement of social observation and thought. Exploring a neglected genre of social knowledge production, the article proposes new perspectives for urban history and aims at stimulating a critical review of contemporary research practices in all branches of the social sciences.
Nineteenth-century journalism has rarely been an object of attention in the humanities and social sciences - despite its political and cultural significance and its documental value. This article ...explores the verbal-visual social sketch, as it has evolved as a journalistic genre on the expanding market of periodicals in early nineteenth-century Europe. The social sketches (often referred to as 'panoramic literature') provide rich ethnographic micro-analysis and often relate to debates held by statisticians, moralists, folklorists, and ethnologists. This article, rather than providing a close reading analysis of selected texts, attempts to trace a genealogy of the sketch of society from a history of knowledge perspective. After placing the consolidation of the social sketch within its socio-medial contexts, the article considers various literary and epistemic 'regimes' that have preconditioned and influenced the evolution of this verbal-visual genre of social observation and formulates cross-genre and interdisciplinary perspectives on the refinement and institutionalization of social inquiry throughout the nineteenth century.
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