Classes, manners, transformations: popular sociology in periodical literature (1830–1850)

Abstract

In 1835, Madrid-based writer Mariano José de Larra characterized the recent outburst of journalistic enterprises across Europe as both a “síntoma” [“symptom”] and an “escuela indispensable... de la vida moderna” (Larra 1835a, 1475) [“indispensable school... of modern life”]. Indeed, the rise of the press in the first half of the nineteenth century was deeply connected to the social, political, and economic transformations of the time. The revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, migration from the land to the city, and the social effects of technological and economic innovation favored the awakening of a sociological consciousness among increasingly large population groups, particularly in European metropolises (Osterhammel 2009, 25–82). On the other hand, the continuous relaxation of censorship, new technologies of paper production and print, and the transformation of reading practices promoted the explosion of print products across Europe and beyond. The periodical press soon would constitute a major forum to discuss the radical changes of the social and cultural world. “[H]abiendo periódicos” [“with the existence of newspapers”], Larra writes in his characteristically satirical tone, “no es necesario estudiar” [“there is no need to study”] because they provide all kinds of (useful and rather pointless) information (Larra 1835a, 1475). Newspapers, according to Larra (1476), tell us about political events and the theatre playbill, discuss what a Tory is and what a Whig is, and if Spain is or is not to be considered a progressive country. “Convengamos, pues” [“Let us agree, then”], he continues, “en que el periódico es el grande archivo de los conocimientos humanos, y que si hay algún medio en este siglo de ser ignorante, es no leer un periódico” (1476) [“that the newspaper is the great archive of human knowledge, and that if there is any way of being ignorant in this century, it is to not read a newspaper”]. The journalistic pursuit of social observation is in a unique way reflected in countless “sociographic” writings that, especially in the 1830s and 1840s, depicted new professions and technologies, social types, institutions, and cultural routines of the transforming societies. Propagating the inspection of the surfaces of the social universe, these “sketches of manners,” “esquisses de mœurs,” or “cuadros de costumbres,” as they were called in