Respectable Citizens: Gender, Family, and Unemployment in Ontario's Great Depression

by Lara A. Campbell

High unemployment rates, humiliating relief policy, and the spectre of eviction characterized the experiences of many Ontario families in the Great Depression. Respectable Citizens is an examination of the material difficulties and survival strategies of families facing poverty and unemployment, and an analysis of how collective action and protest redefined the meanings of welfare and citizenship in the 1930s. Lara Campbell draws on diverse sources including newspapers, family and juvenile court records, premiers' papers, memoirs, and oral histories to uncover the ways in which the material workings of the family and the discursive category of 'respectable' citizenship were invested with gendered obligations and Anglo-British identity. Respectable Citizens demonstrates how women and men represented themselves as entitled to make specific claims on the state, shedding new light on the cooperative and conflicting relationships between men and women, parents and children, and citizen and state in 1930s Canada.

302 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2009

Reviews

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Information factor was good and it was fairly interesting in the first three chapters but the final three were rather boring.

[Jessie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of information. Most of the historical content comes from court records. Important to note that in most cases when the word "women" is used the author means "mothers".