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9781469694252 Academic Inspection Copy

Order of Business

The Golden Age of Fraternity and Its Legacy of Inequality
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Though the industrial revolution pushed Americans into radically new modes of living, working, and organizing, patriarchy and white supremacy survived in the new institutions of the industrial economy. Fraternal orders flourished so spectacularly between the Civil War and World War I that this era-the peak of the industrial revolution-is known as the Golden Age of Fraternity. In this work of historically informed sociology, Pamela Popielarz explores the hidden impact of fraternal orders on systemic inequalities in American business. Most orders welcomed only white men, yet members ranged from capitalist elites to wage workers. Popielarz analyzes the Freemasons and the Knights of Pythias, illuminating who they were, what they aimed to do, and how they adopted novel business practices during the Golden Age. In doing so, she reveals the collective imprint of fraternal orders on business culture and offers new ways to understand contemporary racial and gender inequalities.
Pamela Popielarz is associate professor of sociology at the University of Illinois Chicago.
"An engaging, beautifully written, and highly original analysis of the economic life and legacies of the Golden Age of fraternalism in the United States that builds on our understanding of how fraternities both contributed to upward mobility and exacerbated patterns of inequality."-Elisabeth S. Clemens, author of Civic Gifts: Voluntarism and the Making of the American Nation-State
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