Description
Oxford Morale A Modern British History 2017 Edition by Daniel Ussishkin
Morale asks how is it that modern
Britons have come to regard morale as a category of conduct, vital for the
success of collective effort in war and peace, and a mark of good, modern, and
human managerial practice, appropriate for a democratic age? This book tells
the intellectual, cultural, and institutional history of morale in modern
imperial Britain: its emergence as a new concept during the long nineteenth
century, its changing meanings and
significations, and the social and political goals
those who discussed, observed, or managed morale sought to achieve. Using
theoretical approaches and based on empirical research, the book's foremost
originality is in the argument itself: that morale was formalized as a new
military disciplinary problem during the long.
nineteenth century, and that during the era of the
two world wars it permeated nearly every civilian sphere of life as a new way
of managing human conduct. Morale traces how it gradually emerged from a
problem that was regarded as residual at best to one that was seen as the
epitome of proper managerial practice, its institutional manifestations and
promotion by myriad organizations and the social-democratic state, and its
emergence as a potent political concept from Britain's
social-democratic moment until the ascendancy of
the New Right. It is the first history of morale, in Britain or elsewhere
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Morale, Modernity, and British Social Imaginaries
2. The Reformation of Conduct: Transforming Military Discipline in
Nineteenth-Century Britain
3. The Sources of Collective Action: The Emergence of Morale as a New Military
Problem
4. New Wars: Morale and Democratic Mobilization
5. The Techno-Politics of Consensus: Morale at the Workplace
Epilogue: Morale in a New (Neo-Liberal) Key?
Notes
Bibliography
Index