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dashadashahi's review against another edition
4.0
In this work Smith seeks to investigate the culture that shaped and the relationships that took place in northern Britain between working-class men. Smith does this through five chapters, plus an introduction and conclusion. The second chapter, “Policing and Prosecutions” uses court records to illustrate that in comparison to southern metropolitan places, the number of prosecutions remained rather low until the post-war years. As she expands on in chapter three, the working-class culture cultivated an anti-authority stance among most workers which resulted in men believing that police had no authority over consensual sexual relationships. The fourth chapter, “Work and Family,” highlights how men’s sphere of work remained distinct from home and family life, which allowed for a degree of fluidity in sexual and non-sexual relationships with other men. Chapter five, “Sex,” provides an alternative to the narrative that only urban spaces provided geographies that allowed same-sex activity to flourish. Indeed, men met in public spaces such as pubs, toilets, and streets for homosocial and sexual relations with other men although the sub-culture of these centres looked different, in part due to the language that working-class men used to understand sexuality. This is the topic of chapter six, “Language” which considers the “absence of a language of sexuality” that lasted until the late 1950s which, rather than indicating ignorance, represented a degree of sexual freedom. Through this analysis, Smith argues that class and region played critical roles in shaping understandings of sexuality as demonstrated by northern England’s working-class masculine culture which allowed men to engage with men in sexual manners outside the constraints of labels and binaries which would later restrict men’s sexual fluidity.
Smith combines social and cultural approaches in her research which leads her to use a “diverse range of sources” (p. 15). She also builds her research off of the “New British Queer History” pioneered by researchers such as Matt Houlbrook, Harry Cocks, and Matt Cook move away from histories of sexuality tied to legal and medical documents only by seeking the “personal” (p. 6). Thus, while Smith bases the backbone of her research on court records and police reports, these sources are fleshed out through the use of newspapers, which highlight local culture and public values, and the Edward Carpenter Archive, which provides personal letters and writings between men that highlight differences between class, region, and conceptions of sexuality. She also uses memoirs, diaries, autobiographies, and oral history collections. Finally, social research done during the period of study rounds out Smith’s research.
Smith combines social and cultural approaches in her research which leads her to use a “diverse range of sources” (p. 15). She also builds her research off of the “New British Queer History” pioneered by researchers such as Matt Houlbrook, Harry Cocks, and Matt Cook move away from histories of sexuality tied to legal and medical documents only by seeking the “personal” (p. 6). Thus, while Smith bases the backbone of her research on court records and police reports, these sources are fleshed out through the use of newspapers, which highlight local culture and public values, and the Edward Carpenter Archive, which provides personal letters and writings between men that highlight differences between class, region, and conceptions of sexuality. She also uses memoirs, diaries, autobiographies, and oral history collections. Finally, social research done during the period of study rounds out Smith’s research.
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