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The Limits of Rural Capitalism: Family, Culture, and Markets in Montcalm, Manitoba, 1870-1940
Contributor(s): Sylvester, Kenneth M. (Author)
ISBN: 0802083471     ISBN-13: 9780802083470
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
OUR PRICE:   $47.45  
Product Type: Paperback
Published: February 2001
Qty:
Temporarily out of stock - Will ship within 2 to 5 weeks
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Political Science | Labor & Industrial Relations
- History | Canada - General
Dewey: 971.274
LCCN: 2001269543
Physical Information: 0.9" H x 5.9" W x 8.9" (1.05 lbs) 296 pages
Themes:
- Cultural Region - Canadian
- Geographic Orientation - Manitoba
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:

The Limits of Rural Capitalism is an important study of the social and economic development of the Municipality of Montcalm, a largely French-Canadian community in southern Manitoba. It challenges the view in prairie historiography that agriculture had commercialized before the west was opened to settlement, and that ethnic communities alone resisted the market's potential. Using a novel combination of demographic, financial, and legal evidence, Sylvester shows that both Ontario and Quebec migrants came west within family networks, and that neither economic individualism nor ethnic clustering overshadowed the importance of family strategies. In an environment where landed proprietorship was the norm, the demands of parents on the unpaid labour of their children constrained the growth of labour markets, and concerns for farm succession limited the accumulation of wealth.

In the shadow of an industrializing and urbanizing world, these people, who came mainly from the District of Montreal and eastern Ontario, sometimes via New England, raised large families, drew largely on the unpaid labour of kin, owned their own farms, limited financial entanglements with outsiders, and established multiple heirs. While household autonomy diminished over time, the limits of rural capitalism persisted.


Contributor Bio(s): Sylvester, Kenneth M.: - Ken Sylvester is Postdoctoral Fellow, Canadian Families Project, Victoria, BC.