Defiled Trades and Social Outcasts: Honor and Ritual Pollution in Early Modern Germany

Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History

by Kathy Stuart

This book presents a social and cultural history of "dishonorable people" (unehrliche Leute), an outcast group in early modern Germany. Executioners, skinners, grave-diggers, shepherds, barber-surgeons, millers, linen-weavers, sow-gelders, latrine-cleaners, and bailiffs were among the "dishonorable" by virtue of their trades. It shows the extent to which dishonor determined the life chances and self-identity of these people. Taking Augsburg as a prime example, it investigates how honorable estates interacted with dishonorable people, and shows how the pollution anxieties of early modern Germans structured social and political relations within honorable society.

Genres: History, Anthropology, European History, Nonfiction, Germany

300 pages, Hardcover

First published May 3, 1996

Reviews

[Heidi Nemo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was one of prof. Stuart's library grunts for this book, so I enjoy the hell out of it. Learned more about the structures, logics, and techniques of law and torture than any human might ever want to.

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating, although sometimes too quick to dismiss economic arguments. Elias abounds.