İnsan ve Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi

Yazarlar: Duygu ÖZAKIN

Konular:Beşeri Bilimler, Ortak Disiplinler

DOI:10.53048/johass.861469

Anahtar Kelimeler:Child labour,Mechanisation of the body,Industrial revolution,Criticism of the enlightenment (counter-enlightenment),Vladimir Odoevsky

Özet: The main objective of the present study is to analyse Russian polymath, the leading representative of the 19th century Russian thought and Romanticism Prince Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoevsky’s (1803-1869) criticism of industrialisation through a sociological perspective. In his masterpiece Russian Nights [Russkie nochi], which first appeared in 1844, Odoevsky reflects his critical knowledge arising from his intellectual versatility through a fiction in which the discussion about the technical innovations of the era is interwined with short stories. After nine nights of conversation and reading between four intellectual characters, an epilogue is offered to the reader in which the social and economic problems of their age are discussed. One of the most striking chapter of the epilogue is the debate on the labour policies of Britain and other industrialised countries and the exploitation of child labour. The author puts forward a series of critical views on positivist manifestos by thinkers from Britain and Continental Europe and scientists from various disciplines. Odoevsky, who have read the texts in question through French translations, like many Russian intellectuals of the era, strongly opposes to their scientific management theories and points out that rational thought deviates from the aim, serves the interests of capital and alleges an excuse for the exploitation of child labour. This study aims to analyse the author's views on the subject in the light of sociological and historical data on child labour. The study discusses the justification behind the pessimistic predictions of the mechanisation of the human body and society in late industrialised Russia.

---