The World of the Paris Caf?: Sociability Among the French Working Class, 1789-1914
W Scott Haine
Johns Hopkins University Press
9780801860706
0-8018-6070-9
In The World of the Paris Caf, W. Scott Haine investigates what the working-class caf reveals about the formation of urban life in nineteenth-century France. Caf society was not the product of a small elite of intellectuals and artists, he argues, but was instead the creation of a diverse and changing working population. Making unprecedented use of primary sources--from marriage contracts to police and bankruptcy records--Haine investigates the caf in relation to work, family life, leisure, gender roles, and political activity. This rich and provocative study offers a bold reinterpretation of the social history of the working men and women of Paris.