Doctoral Dissertation Research: Child Labor Reform in Great Britain, Germany, & the United States

博士论文研究：英国、德国的童工改革

• 批准号: 0826552
• 负责人: Bruce Carruthers
• 金额: $ 0.75万
• 依托单位: Northwestern University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-09-15 至 2009-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0826552&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Child; Labor

SES-0826552Bruce CarruthersElisabeth AndersonNorthwestern UniversityThis dissertation project is a comparative history of child labor policy development in Great Britain (1833-1891), Germany (1839-1903), and the United States (1880-1938), focusing particularly on the impact of changing cultural conceptions of childhood on the evolving content of child labor policy in each country. The research relies on a combination of secondary historical, published primary, and unpublished archival materials. These data will be analyzed to trace changes in child labor policy and in discourses surrounding the problem of child labor in each country over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This research promises to make valuable empirical and theoretical contributions to historical and political sociology in several ways. First, it will identify how and why child labor policy trajectories differed across countries. Furthermore, because child labor laws were the first type of state intervention into the free labor market, the project will offer valuable insight into the political and ideological origins of protective labor legislation more generally. Finally, by analyzing how changing ideas about childhood and child employment shaped the evolving content of child labor laws, the research promises to contribute to the scholarly understanding of the relationship between cultural ideas and policy change. In particular, it should help to specify more precisely how cultural ideas influence the policymaking process. By contributing to social scientific knowledge about the cultural, political and economic conditions facilitating the development of American and European child labor reform policy, this project also promises to yield information pertinent to the contemporary problem of child labor in developing countries. The project, which will show how American and European reformers were able to transform child labor policy in spite of strong resistance from employers and impoverished parents, can shed light on the conditions needed to enable similar reforms in the developing world.

SES-0826552布鲁斯·卡拉瑟斯伊丽莎白·安德森西北大学本论文项目是英国（1833-1891）、德国（1839-1903）和美国（1880-1938）童工政策发展的比较历史，特别关注儿童文化观念的变化对各国童工政策内容演变的影响。该研究依赖于二手历史、已出版的主要和未出版的档案材料的结合。我们将对这些数据进行分析，以追踪十九世纪和二十世纪初各国童工政策和围绕童工问题的讨论的变化。这项研究有望在几个方面为历史和政治社会学做出有价值的实证和理论贡献。首先，它将确定各国童工政策轨迹如何以及为何不同。此外，由于童工法是国家干预自由劳动力市场的第一种类型，因此该项目将为更广泛地了解保护性劳工立法的政治和意识形态起源提供宝贵的见解。 最后，通过分析有关童年和儿童就业的观念的变化如何影响童工法内容的演变，该研究有望有助于对文化观念与政策变化之间关系的学术理解。特别是，它应该有助于更准确地说明文化观念如何影响政策制定过程。通过贡献有关文化、政治和经济条件的社会科学知识，促进美国和欧洲童工改革政策的制定，该项目还有望提供有关发展中国家当代童工问题的信息。该项目将展示美国和欧洲的改革者如何在雇主和贫困父母的强烈抵制下改变童工政策，并揭示在发展中国家进行类似改革所需的条件。