Main entry:

Ethington, Philip J.

Title & Author:

The public city : the political construction of urban life in San Francisco, 1850-1900 / Philip J. Ethington.

Publication:

Cambridge [England] ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Description:

xvi, 464 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Notes:
Originally presented as the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--1986.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 427-453) and index.
Introduction: The public city: American political culture in nineteenth-century San Francisco -- 1. The agony of authority: People, public, party, and power, 1849-1859 -- 2. Republican terror: The origins of Vigilante movements of 1851 and 1856 -- 3. Though the heavens fall: The Vigilante movement culture of 1856 -- 4. Race and reaction: Civil War political mobilization -- 5. The postwar reconstruction of the urban public sphere -- 6. A language of politics in a politics of class: The Workingmen's Party of California -- 7. The institutional preconditions of progressivism -- 8. Progressivism as the politics of needs: The mobilization of group identities -- Conclusion: A new public sphere and a new government.

Summary:

The history of San Francisco from 1850 through 1900 identifies the active participation of citizens in communication, persuasion, and mobilization as the "public city," the site of American political and social change. Nineteenth-century Americans relied on the Roman and Enlightenment models of the "public sphere" as a forum for debate and self-government. Drawing on speeches, pamphlets, newspapers, and census and electoral data, the book reinterprets the city's turbulent history. Challenging decades of scholarship that treats urban politics as the expression of social-group experience and power, the author develops the opposite thesis that social-group identities of race, class, ethnicity, and gender were politically constructed in the public sphere in the process of mobilization and journalistic discourse. New methods of political mobilization unleashed by the Civil War resulted in the death of republican liberalism and birth of pluralist liberalism, and in the transformation from a political conception of society to a social conception of politics in the years from 1850 to 1900.

Resources:
Table of contents
Book review (H-Net)
Publisher description

ISBN:

0521415659
9780521415651

Subject:

Political culture California San Francisco History 19th century.
Political participation California San Francisco History 19th century.
Participation politique Californie San Francisco Histoire 19e siècle.
Political culture.
Political participation.
Politics and government.
Social conditions.
Politische Beteiligung
Politische Kultur
Openbaar leven.
Politiek gedrag.
Politica (america do norte)
Cultura.
Historia dos estados unidos.
Participacao politica.
Participation politique États-Unis San Francisco (Calif.)
Culture politique États-Unis San Francisco (Calif.) 19e siècle.
Geschichte 1850-1900.
San Francisco (Calif.) Politics and government.
San Francisco (Calif.) Social conditions.
California San Francisco.
San Francisco, Calif.
San Francisco (Calif.) Politics and government 19th century.
San Francisco (Calif.) Social conditions 19th century.
San Francisco (Calif.) Conditions sociales 19e siècle.
San Francisco (Calif.) Politique culturelle 19e siècle.
San Francisco, Baie de (États-Unis ; région) Relations extérieures 19e siècle.
San Francisco (Calif.) Histoire universelle 19e siècle.
San Francisco (Calif.)
Politics History
California

Form/genre:

Theses.
History.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 93109
Call No.: ID JS1437.E84; ID:95-B902
Status: Available