Defiled Trades and Social Outcasts

By Kathy Stuart

Book Overview

This book presents a social and cultural history of dishonorable people (unehrliche Leute), an outcast group in early modern Germany. Executioners, skinners, grave-diggers, shepherds, barber-surgeons, millers, linen-weavers, sow-gelders, latrine-cleaners, and bailiffs were among the dishonorable by virtue of their trades. It shows the extent to which dishonor determined the life chances and self-identity of these people. Taking Augsburg as a prime example, it investigates how honorable estates interacted with dishonorable people, and shows how the pollution anxieties of early modern Germans structured social and political relations within honorable society.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521652391
• ISBN13: 9780521652391
• Release Date: June 2000
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 300 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 9.3" x 6.1"