Women have been consistently excluded from all manner of clubs and associations over the years, whether as the direct result of an anti-woman policy or indirectly through prohibitive entry requirements, social constraints, or conflict of interests and tastes. Retaliation from women has taken two directions: some women have set up their own exclusive clubs that reflect their own interests and aims, while others have taken on the men and striven to break down resistance to their joining ‘men’s’ clubs on an equal footing. This book traces the development of the current situation, drawing from a wide range of sources, some of which have never been published before. Looking at the different types of clubs and associations that include women and girls from the WI to the Girl Guides, this book is a rich social history full of fascinating observations and stories, and will be absorbing reading for anyone interested in sociology, women’s history or the transformation of Britain’s social life.

Modern freemasonry was invented in London about 1717, but was only one of a surge of British associations in the early modern era which had originated before the English Revolution. By 1800, thousands of clubs and societies had swept the country. Recruiting widely from the urban affluent classes, mainly amongst men, they traditionally involved heavy drinking, feasting, singing, and gambling. They ranged from political, religious and scientific societies, artistic and literary clubs, to sporting societies, bee keeping, and birdfancying clubs, and a myriad of other associations.

This dictionary is the first attempt to identify systematically the large heterogeneous group of women's organisations that grew up from the early 19th century up to the beginning of the modern women's movement, from women abolitionists and Chartists through Social workers, nurses, suffragists and sexual reformers to women pilots, journalists and cricketers. The work brings together over 500 separate entities on a wide variety of societies, associations, clubs, unions and other professional, social and political bodies organised by women or for men.

Reveals how changing ideas about gender and race shaped - and were shaped by - London and its literature.

Barbershop singing is a distinctive and under-documented facet of Britain's musical landscape. Imported from the USA in the 1960s, it has developed into an active and highly organized musical community characterized by strong social support structures and a proselytizing passion for its particular style. This style is defined, within the community, in largely music-theoretical terms and is both highly prescriptive and continually contested, but there is also a host of performance traditions that articulate barbershop's identity as a distinct and specific genre. Liz Garnett documents and analyses the social and musical practices of this specialized community of music-makers, and extends this analysis to theorize the relationship between music and self-identity. The book engages with a range of sociological and musicological theoretical frameworks in order to explore the role of harmony, ritual, sexual politics, performance styles and 'tag-singing' in barbershop. This analysis shows how musical style and cultural discourses can be seen to interact in the formation of identity. Garnett provides the first in-depth scholarly insight into the British barbershop community, and contributes to ongoing debates in the semiotics and the sociology of music.

This book offers the first ever academic study of women's cricket in Britain from its origins in the 18th century to the present day. Through use of interviews with many former players, the book argues that women's cricket was a site of feminism across its history and an important source of empowerment to women who participated in the sport.

"132 short histories of organisations, grouped in thirteen sections"--Introduction.

This book is an historical survey of women’s sport from 1850-1960. It looks at some of the more recent methodological approaches to writing sports history and raises questions about how the history of women’s sport has so far been shaped by academic writers. Questions explored in this text include: What are the fresh perspectives and newly available sources for the historian of women’s sport? How do these take forward established debates on women’s place in sporting culture and what novel approaches do they suggest? How can our appreciation of fashion, travel, food and medical history be advanced by looking at women’s involvement in sport? How can we use some of the current ideas and methodologies in the recent literature on the history and sociology of sport in order to look afresh at women’s participation? Jean Williams’s original research on these topics and more will be a useful resource for scholars in the fields of sports, women’s studies, history and sociology.

This is a study of Britain's presence in China both at its peak, and during its inter-war dissolution in the face of assertive Chinese nationalism and declining British diplomatic support. Using archival materials from China and records in Britain and the United States, the author paints a portrait of the traders, missionaries, businessmen, diplomats and settlers who constituted "Britain-in-China", challenging our understanding of British imperialism there. Bickers argues that the British presence in China was dominated by urban settlers whose primary allegiance lay not with any grand imperial design, but with their own communities and precarious livelihoods. This brought them into conflict not only with the Chinese population, but with the British imperial government. The book also analyzes the formation and maintenance of settler identities, and then investigates how the British state and its allies brought an end to the reign of freelance, settler imperialism on the China coast. At the same time, other British sectors, missionary and business, renegotiated their own relationship with their Chinese markets and the Chinese state and distanced themselves from the settler British.