Books by William M. Reddy

In the twelfth century, the Catholic Church attempted a thoroughgoing reform of marriage and sexual behavior aimed at eradicating sexual desire from Christian lives. This book illuminates the birth of a cultural movement that managed to regulate selfish desire and render it innocent - or innocent enough.

Professor Reddy proposes to replace class with an alternative concept that seeks to capture from a new angle the fundamental relations of exchange and authority that have shaped social life in modern Europe.

Professor Reddy traces the transition from pre-capitalist to capitalist culture in the French textile industry from 1750 to 1900. Using anthropology and social history, he shows how and why the conception of the social order based on the idea of the market began to emerge, and examines the attendant political and social conflict.