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

SES-0826552布鲁斯CarruthersElisabeth安德森西北大学本论文项目是童工政策的发展在英国（1833年至1891年），德国（1839年至1903年）和美国（1880年至1938年）的比较历史，特别侧重于不断变化的儿童文化观念的影响，在每个国家的童工政策的演变内容。这项研究依赖于二级历史，出版的主要和未出版的档案材料的组合。这些数据将被分析，以跟踪童工政策的变化，并在围绕童工问题在每个国家在十九世纪和二十世纪初的过程中的话语。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经验和理论贡献。首先，它将确定如何以及为什么童工政策轨迹在各国之间存在差异。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，该项目将提供更广泛的保护性劳动立法的政治和意识形态根源的宝贵见解。 最后，通过分析不断变化的思想，对儿童和儿童就业塑造了不断变化的童工法的内容，研究有望有助于文化观念和政策变化之间的关系的学术理解。特别是，它应有助于更准确地说明文化观念如何影响决策过程。通过促进有关促进美国和欧洲童工改革政策发展的文化、政治和经济条件的社会科学知识，该项目还有望产生与发展中国家当代童工问题有关的信息。该项目将展示美国和欧洲的改革者是如何在雇主和贫困父母的强烈抵制下改变童工政策的，它可以揭示发展中国家进行类似改革所需的条件。

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 The research relies on a combination of secondary historical, published primary, and unpublished archival materials.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.