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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Material Consumption Of An 18th-Century Middling Urban Craftsman In Boston, Massachusetts, Lauryn E. Sharp
Material Consumption Of An 18th-Century Middling Urban Craftsman In Boston, Massachusetts, Lauryn E. Sharp
Graduate Masters Theses
This thesis studies how Caleb Parker, a blacksmith and craftsman who lived in the early- to mid-18th century, viewed and utilized refinement and genteel behaviors using the glass and ceramic artifacts recovered from a privy at his home at 23 Unity Street in Boston’s North End. Background research explores the concept of “partible refinement,” which speaks to the notion that the “middling sorts'' at this time, including craftspeople like Caleb Parker, had the agency to selectively use different components of refined gentility according to their personal consumer choice and tastes. This resulted in middling sorts incorporating both traditional and modern …
Entertaining, Dining, And Novel Drinking: Rural Gentility And The Reverend John Hancock's Household, Lexington, Massachusetts, 1700-1750, Katie Lynn Kosack
Entertaining, Dining, And Novel Drinking: Rural Gentility And The Reverend John Hancock's Household, Lexington, Massachusetts, 1700-1750, Katie Lynn Kosack
Graduate Masters Theses
The rise of refined behavior paralleled the expansion of colonial markets and consumer choice. Objects related to the refined consumption of food and drink took center stage in the transformation of colonial entertaining. The availability of new foodstuffs and the associated equipage transformed sociability and the meaning of eating and drinking. These changes coupled with the high level of social mobility in eighteenth century Massachusetts, meant that performances with novel objects became dynamic symbols of one's social status. Utilizing Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital, this work explores how Rev. John Hancock, minister of Lexington, Massachusetts, expressed his social status through …