Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T23:00:32.021Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 5 - Dividing Head and Hand

Gentleman Farmers, Agriculturists and Expertise

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2022

James D. Fisher
Affiliation:
University of Exeter
Get access

Summary

Chapter 5 shifts focus to consider the social effects of the appropriation and codification of the art of husbandry by examining the impact of books on new divisions of labour. It argues that agricultural books facilitated the increasing separation between intellectual and manual labour; a task division between those who exercised knowledge on a specific farm or estate and those who followed instructions, and a social division between those who produced knowledge and those who applied it in practice. The former was manifested in the figure of the gentleman farmer who managed with a pen, and the latter was manifested in the ‘agriculturist’, whose contribution to farming was primarily theoretical. Both were expressions of a new book-based agricultural expertise distinct from local custom and experience. The cumulative effect of print was to shape a new social system of agricultural knowledge in which cultivation was directed by men with such expertise, which we can call agriculturism.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Enclosure of Knowledge
Books, Power and Agrarian Capitalism in Britain, 1660–1800
, pp. 170 - 204
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×