Meat for the Multitudes: Market Culture in Paris, New York City, and Mexico City over the Long Nineteenth Century

2004 ◽  
Vol 109 (4) ◽  
pp. 1055-1083 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Horowitz ◽  
Jeffrey M. Pilcher ◽  
Sydney Watts
Author(s):  
Aimée Boutin

This concluding chapter summarizes key themes and presents some final thoughts. It argues that the collective experience of sounds is what gives aurality meaning, even though there is an element of idiosyncrasy in sound perception. The street cries of peddlers and hawkers were meaningful sounds that resonated as a shared cultural experience in the nineteenth century, even for those who rarely heard them, or chose not to write about them. In the twenty-first century, peddlers still operate and vocalize in locations as diverse as New York City, Mexico City, Dakar, Port-au-Prince, Calcutta, Sidi Bouzid, and even Paris. Modern forms of peddling are alive and well, and the intrusiveness of street trade remains a point of contention in today's noise-conscious society.


1991 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 545-563 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald A. DeBats

The problem of census undercounts, a familiar political issue for modern groups or instrumentalities that consider themselves underrepresented in the Census Bureau statistics, has only recently attracted attention from historians. While the modern “miss rate” is potentially high among some groups (the reason for the emphasis on the homeless in the 1990 census), the general rate of underenumeration appears to have diminished in recent censuses. The bureau acknowledges a net undercount of 5.6% of the population in 1940; the error declined gradually to an estimated 1.4% in 1980 (Burnham 1986; Anderson 1988; Edmondson 1988).Nineteenth-century censuses no doubt contained more serious errors. Although he did not have underenumeration specifically in mind, the administrator for the 1870 census said that “the censuses of 1850, 1860, and of 1870 are loaded with bad statistics. There are statistics in the census of 1870,I am sorry to say, where some of the results are false to the extent of one-half. They had to be published then, because the law called for it; but I took the liberty of branding them as untrustworthy and in some cases giving the reasons therefore at some length” (quoted in Sharpless and Shortridge 1975: 411). Strikingly modern quarrels surrounded the accuracy of the 1840 Boston and New Orleans censuses, while the errors in the 1870 enumeration of New York City and Philadelphia were sufficient to cause recounts of both cities (ibid. ; Knights 1971: 145).


Author(s):  
Federico Varese

From the mid-nineteenth century, many Sicilians, including members of the mafia, were on the move. After sketching the contours of the mafia in Sicily in the nineteenth century, this chapter outlines the parallel history of Italian migration and mafia activities in New York City and Rosario, Argentina, and offers an analytic account of the diverging outcomes. Only in the North American city did a mafia that resembled the Sicilian one emerge. The Prohibition provided an enormous boost to both the personnel and power of Italian organized crime. The risk of punishment was low, the gains to be made were enormous, and there was no social stigma attached to this trade.


Author(s):  
April F. Masten

This chapter examines the transnational origins of the challenge dance, a distinctly American tradition of brag dancing, and the ways in which Irish and African dance forms converged and collided in the taverns of New York City in the early nineteenth century. Part theater, part sport, challenge dances emerged in the antebellum era alongside boxing. Dance matches were the product of the intersecting diasporas and cultural exchange of Irish and African emigrants moving through the Atlantic world. The chapter first considers the compatibilities in African and Irish dance traditions before discussing the genealogy of challenge dancing. It then looks at challenge dance competitions held on streets and in taverns as part of white and blackface shows. It also describes a cultural space and moment in which working-class blacks and whites saw enough likeness in their dance traditions to frame a space of public, popular competition.


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