Working Men's Bodies: work camps in Britain, 1880-1940

Citation

Field J (2013) Working Men's Bodies: work camps in Britain, 1880-1940. Manchester: Manchester University Press. http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9780719087684

Abstract
The book is a comprehensive study, from the labour colonies of late Victorian and Edwardian Britain to the government instructional centres of the 1930s. It covers therapeutic communities for alcoholics, epileptics, prostitutes and ‘mental defectives', as well as alternative communities founded by socialists, anarchists and nationalists in the hope of building a new world. It explores residential training schemes for women, many of which sought to develop ‘soft bodies' fit for domestic service, while more mainstream camps were preoccupied with ‘hardening' male bodies through heavy labour. Conceptually, it is concerned with tracing and understanding the complex relations between work, masculinity, training and citizen service.

Keywords
history of education; masculinity; labour; work camps; domestic labour; labour service; the body