Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- General introduction
- Presentation of Economy, Polity, and Society
- Part I
- Part II
- Part III
- 9 Political and domestic economy in Victorian social thought: Ruskin and Xenophon
- 10 State and market in British university history
- 11 Mr Gradgrind and Jerusalem
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Index
9 - Political and domestic economy in Victorian social thought: Ruskin and Xenophon
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- General introduction
- Presentation of Economy, Polity, and Society
- Part I
- Part II
- Part III
- 9 Political and domestic economy in Victorian social thought: Ruskin and Xenophon
- 10 State and market in British university history
- 11 Mr Gradgrind and Jerusalem
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Index
Summary
‘The household has been treated by economists with curious negligence.’ Writing in 1911, Mabel Atkinson, tutor in economics at King's College of Household and Social Science, proceeded to argue that, from Adam Smith, classical, neo-classical and historical economists were equally to blame. ‘Economists … [who] have generally been men … with their eyes fixed on trade and the mechanism of trade, very naturally neglected that section of life in which values, material and immaterial were being continually created, but for use alone, not for commercial purposes.’ In defining wealth, economists had certainly come to admit that it included collective and immaterial well-being (as Marshall had in book 2, chapter 2 of his Principles), but they characteristically then reverted to discussing wealth as though it consisted of material exchangeable commodities; whereas, ‘clearly the real income of a family is increased if children have access to good free schools or ample open spaces’. Atkinson was writing to promote the scientific status of household administration in the higher education of women, and also to urge the need for more systematic practical research on consumption habits of different social classes. But she concluded by hoping that:
the principle of household management may in turn react on economic science, and may show to its professors that value in use, though more difficult to detect and estimate than value in exchange, has been unduly neglected both in theory and in practice. If, to the management of our towns – which are, after all, only our homes on a larger scale – were applied the principles used by a good housekeeper in ordering her home, then cleanliness, beauty and convenience would increase around her. […]
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Economy, Polity, and SocietyBritish Intellectual History 1750–1950, pp. 205 - 223Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000