The industrial revolution transformed British popular culture, discuss.
The rural way of life in Britain, seemed very secure before industrialisation. The set cultural and social values that were in place were set deep into tight-knot communities which thrived upon tradition and mutual understanding between classes. But with the industrial age came changes. With both shifts in terms of demographic location and with attitudes towards and between classes and social groups, the 'working man' found himself in a very new and diverse scenario which was a phenomenon in the western world. I will be discussing the conditions of both rural and urban popular culture and how the industrial revolution came about changing popular culture in Britain.
Rural popular culture was simplistic and traditional. There was a big emphasis on the church and the church calendar. The fact that rural life was based around farming and agriculture meant that the seasonal shift in crops and the agricultural calendar and lifestyle was also a huge effect on people residing in rural England.
English: Watt's steam engine at the lobby of the H...
Created by the previous uploader using a popular O...
Deutsch: Living Standards during Industrial Revolu...Working times would revolve more around when the work was finished, rather than a particular time and time off for weekends, vacations and obviously bank holidays were not heard of.
Cultural practices that were evident in rural popular culture would probably be deemed Neanderthal or ever Barbaric by today's values. Activities or sports seemed to involve either killing animals, watching animals kill each other or hurting one another
'The object of each gamester in this play, as in cudgelling, is to... fetch blood from the others head...taking a little skin from his pericranium, or drawing a stream from his nose, or knocking out a few of his teeth'
From Robert Malcolmson, Popular Recreations in English Society p43
. The more tame activities and pass-times involved races, drinking or smoking competitions,