ABSTRACT
The upsurge of interest in the nineteenth-century city has not been confined to the United Kingdom, and one of the most productive strands of recent urban historical research has been the cross-fertilization of ideas between Britain and Europe, Australasia and, in particular, North America. Family structure and the role of the family in the process of urbanization is one important area of sociological interest. An upsurge of interest in nineteenth-century towns coincided with the so-called ‘quantitative revolution’ in the social sciences. Most basic is the argument that the methods of the natural sciences are inapplicable, because social scientists are in the last resort dealing with the behaviour of actors with individual freewill. An alternative approach to the study of the urban economy shifts attention from individual industries and firms to the operation of the labour market, the way in which different groups in society gained access to work and the conditions of employment in different trades.
