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

这个论文项目是英国（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每个国家童工政策内容演变的影响。这项研究依赖于二手历史资料、已出版的原始资料和未出版的档案资料。将对这些数据进行分析，以追踪19世纪和20世纪初各国童工政策和围绕童工问题的论述的变化。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经验和理论贡献。首先，它将确定各国的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，该项目将为更广泛地了解保护性劳动立法的政治和意识形态起源提供有价值的见解。最后，通过分析儿童和儿童就业观念的变化如何影响童工法内容的演变，本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决策过程。通过提供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，该项目还有望提供与发展中国家当代童工问题相关的信息。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，它可以揭示在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 The research relies on a combination of secondary historical, published primary, and unpublished archival materials.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.