| Historically, bells and other sonic signaling instruments have proved extremely versatile for sending forth a multiplicity of signals throughout many kinds of communities. This dissertation explores nineteenth-century America labor managers' use of bell, and in some cases, horn signals to direct, discipline and subordinate their workforces---a phenomenon here termed "sonic labor management." "Instruments of Power" is a tripartite study that examines industrial labor, agricultural labor and domestic labor, and discusses both free and enslaved workers.;Geographically, the first section focuses on New England textile mills, the second on southern plantations (both during the antebellum period and Reconstruction), and the third on domestic service in both northern and southern antebellum homes. Although the managerial authority embodied in bell signals never went entirely unchallenged, in each setting signal bells gave visible and aural shape to managerial power and demarked racial, gender and, especially, class hierarchies. This is interdisciplinary study, traversing the fields of material culture, aural history and labor history, and exploring the interrelations between the visible, the audible and the internalized. |
