Distant Strangers: How Britain Became Modern
What does it mean to live in the modern world? How different is that world from those that preceded it, and when did we become modern?

In Distant Strangers, James Vernon argues that the world was made modern not by revolution, industrialization, or the Enlightenment. Instead, he shows how in Britain, a place long held to be the crucible of modernity, a new and distinctly modern social condition emerged by the middle of the nineteenth century. Rapid and sustained population growth, combined with increasing mobility of people over greater distances and concentrations of people in cities, created a society of strangers.

Vernon explores how individuals in modern societies adapted to live among strangers by forging more abstract and anonymous economic, social, and political relations, as well as by reanimating the local and the personal.
1119259326
Distant Strangers: How Britain Became Modern
What does it mean to live in the modern world? How different is that world from those that preceded it, and when did we become modern?

In Distant Strangers, James Vernon argues that the world was made modern not by revolution, industrialization, or the Enlightenment. Instead, he shows how in Britain, a place long held to be the crucible of modernity, a new and distinctly modern social condition emerged by the middle of the nineteenth century. Rapid and sustained population growth, combined with increasing mobility of people over greater distances and concentrations of people in cities, created a society of strangers.

Vernon explores how individuals in modern societies adapted to live among strangers by forging more abstract and anonymous economic, social, and political relations, as well as by reanimating the local and the personal.
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Distant Strangers: How Britain Became Modern

Distant Strangers: How Britain Became Modern

by James Vernon
Distant Strangers: How Britain Became Modern

Distant Strangers: How Britain Became Modern

by James Vernon

Paperback(First Edition, 1)

$24.95 
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Overview

What does it mean to live in the modern world? How different is that world from those that preceded it, and when did we become modern?

In Distant Strangers, James Vernon argues that the world was made modern not by revolution, industrialization, or the Enlightenment. Instead, he shows how in Britain, a place long held to be the crucible of modernity, a new and distinctly modern social condition emerged by the middle of the nineteenth century. Rapid and sustained population growth, combined with increasing mobility of people over greater distances and concentrations of people in cities, created a society of strangers.

Vernon explores how individuals in modern societies adapted to live among strangers by forging more abstract and anonymous economic, social, and political relations, as well as by reanimating the local and the personal.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780520282049
Publisher: University of California Press
Publication date: 08/01/2014
Series: Berkeley Series in British Studies , #9
Edition description: First Edition, 1
Pages: 184
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

James Vernon is professor of history at UC Berkeley. He is author or editor of several books including, most recently, Hunger: A Modern History and The Peculiarities of Liberal Modernity in Imperial Britain (UCP/GAIA, 2011), and is coeditor of the Berkeley Series in British Studies. 

Table of Contents

List of Figures
Preface

1 What Is Modernity?
2 A Society of Strangers
3 Governing Strangers
4 Associating with Strangers
5 An Economy of Strangers

Conclusion
Notes
Index
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