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Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings - With ISBN/ISSN › Chapter (peer-reviewed) › peer-review
Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings - With ISBN/ISSN › Chapter (peer-reviewed) › peer-review
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TY - CHAP
T1 - Coal in the bath
T2 - Poverty, modernity and the welfare state in post-war Britain
AU - Lambert, Michael
PY - 2025/8/21
Y1 - 2025/8/21
N2 - During the era of the ‘classic’ welfare state in postwar Britain, coal moved from being a symbol of industrial prosperity and national wealth to one of household poverty. Decline and deindustrialisation meant that coal came to symbolise what was backwards, dirty and old in contrast with the new, modern and clean. Here, the ‘coal in the bath’ myth became ubiquitous as it gripped both official and national consciousness, reimagining a range of social problems as behavioural ones. This chapter uses the underlying complex and contradictory meanings contained in the ‘coal in the bath’ mythologies and realities as a lens to explore tensions between modernity and poverty in the postwar British welfare state. Here, the materiality of coal is central, serving as an object of poverty exposing the gap between the promises of the welfare state and its capacity to deliver.
AB - During the era of the ‘classic’ welfare state in postwar Britain, coal moved from being a symbol of industrial prosperity and national wealth to one of household poverty. Decline and deindustrialisation meant that coal came to symbolise what was backwards, dirty and old in contrast with the new, modern and clean. Here, the ‘coal in the bath’ myth became ubiquitous as it gripped both official and national consciousness, reimagining a range of social problems as behavioural ones. This chapter uses the underlying complex and contradictory meanings contained in the ‘coal in the bath’ mythologies and realities as a lens to explore tensions between modernity and poverty in the postwar British welfare state. Here, the materiality of coal is central, serving as an object of poverty exposing the gap between the promises of the welfare state and its capacity to deliver.
M3 - Chapter (peer-reviewed)
SN - 9781350368187
SN - 9781350368170
SP - 75
EP - 86
BT - Objects of poverty
A2 - Harley, Joseph
A2 - Holmes, Vicky
PB - Bloomsbury Academic
CY - London
ER -