Spiegel van het hemelhuis.
De wisselwerking tussen woonideaal en sociale rollen bij de Belgische Boerinnenbond (1907-1940)
Sofie De Caigny en Wouter Vanderstede
Mirror of the House in Heaven. The interaction between the ideal of dwelling and social roles in the Farmer Women's Association (1907-1940) in Belgium
This article addresses the issue of how the Farmer Women's Association in Belgium dealt with the complex modernisation of rural life during the interwar years. By trying to get control over the process of modernisation, the Association
defined and communicated social roles to its female members. These roles were related to norms on dwelling culture and domesticity. Different discursive fields within the organisation (technical, architectural, moral, social, religious) were interconnected and associated with these norms.
De Managerial Revolution in de VS en Nederland in de twintigste eeuw
Jacques van Gerwen, Ferry de Goey en Hugo van Driel
The Managerial Revolution in the USA and The Netherlands during the
In this article we attempt to assess the timing and the extent of the so-called Managerial Revolution (MR) in the USA and The Netherlands more systematically than has been done in the existing literature. We distinguish three dimensions of the MR: the separation of ownership and management (1), the rise of a new class of professional managers (2), and the ascendancy of middle managers in corporate hierarchies (3). The third dimension is measured by using national censuses, while our discussion of the first and second ones is based on existing scholarly works. We conclude that managerialism gained ground in the United States rather gradually during the twentieth century, while a MR - if any - did only take place in the Netherlands after 1960.
Verblinde strijders aan het kolenfront.
Ziek door 'oogsidderen' als een vooroorlogs stressverschijnsel onder mijnwerkers
Miners' nystagmus and work stress among Dutch coalminers in the interwar years
In the inter-war years, occupational nystagmus became a major sick leave cause among Dutch coalminers. Inspired by Great-Britain, where miners' nystagmus was included in the Workers' Compensation Act since 1907, mine unions
sparked in 1927 a political debate aimed to include the eye disorder in the national occupational injuries compensation scheme. Mine employers claimed that disabling nystagmus complaints were mostly feigned and successfully opposed the unions' action. Evidence presented in this article shows that most of the nystagmus related sick leave was genuine. Increase in disabling complaints could well be explained in relation to work stress among miners. High nystagmus incidence rates coincided with steep rises in Dutch coalmining productivity, powered by unprecedented speed up of underground workpace.
Hoe het Plan van de Arbeid te verkopen?
Reclame en 'massapsychologische actie' van de SDAP
How to sell the Plan of Labour. Advertising and 'mass-psychology action' of the Dutch Social Democratic Labour Party (SDAP)
In the 1930s, the Dutch Social Democratic Labour Party (SDAP) adopted a major change in its political program and strategy. This programmatic change enticed the new party leadership to promote a remarkable transformation in the
way social democracy would henceforth present and promote itself. Koos Vorrink and his fellow socialists turned to the world of advertising for inspiration. Professional advertising people argued that there was no fundamental difference between selling consumer goods and 'selling politics'. Moreover, the social democratic leadership propagated the notion that their electorate should no longer be understood as a more or less homogeneous industrial proletariat waiting to be liberated from capitalism. As a result, social-democratic propaganda became more varied than it had ever been. Different groups were targeted, using all kinds of means of communication available at the time. In the end, however, political traditions marked by segmented constituencies ('pillarization') proved to be too persistent.
Hence, the new advertising techniques failed to arouse much enthusiasm or support for social-democratic policies.
De timmerman, de boekdrukker en het ontstaan van de Europese kenniseconomie.
Over de prijs en het aanbod van kennis voor de Industriële Revolutie
Jan Luiten van Zanden
The carpenter, the printer and the genesis of the European knowledge economy. On the price and the supply of knowledge before the Industrial Revolution
The article uses the explanation Joel Mokyr has offered in his recent book The Gifts of Athena. Mokyr claims that the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century was caused by the interaction between propositional knowledge and prescriptive knowledge, and uses this as a starting point for an inquiry into the production and price of these two kinds of knowledge in the centuries before 1800. The article shows that in Western Europe the skill premium (the price for skilled labour) was already relatively low from the 15th century onwards, and that the production of propositional knowledge - measured by the development of book publishing and printing - boomed following Gutenberg's invention of the printing press. The genesis of a European knowledge economy thus already occurred in the centuries before the Industrial Revolution.