The Rites Of Labor Brotherhoods Of Compagnonnage In Old And New Regime France Cynthia M Traunt by Cynthia M. Traunt 9781501737992, 1501737996 instant download after payment.

The Rites of Labor is the only full account of the brotherhoods of compagnonnage, secret associations of French journeymen formed in the late medieval era and surviving into the nineteenth century. In this major contribution to French social history and the anthropology of work culture, Truant re-creates the compagnons'economic activities, their often violent clashes with one another, and the myths and rituals that sustained their bonds. Built on models provided by family, church, guild and in later periods, even Freemasonry-compagnonnage was among the few social institutions of old regime France to outlive the Revolution. These illegal tradebased associations were grouped into rival sects or rites, and they organized powerful interurban networks that survived the state's repeated attempts to eradicate them. The compagnonnages fulfilled many functions for their young, itinerant members, from providing mutual aid to defending their rights. Truant begins her story by discussing competing mid-nineteenth-century views of compagnonnage, at a time when new modes of production and new concepts of fraternity were quickly eroding the old artisanal culture. She then turns back to the seventeenth-century origins of the compagnonnages and chronicles their development though the eighteenth century. Drawing on an array of sources including letters, memoirs, and songs, she presents both the experience of the compagnons themselves and the accounts of outsiders. Truant pays particular attention to the ways in which workers defined their social identity as they responded to enormous political, cultural, and economic change during the transition to the modern era.