Soap, Sunlight and Subjectivity
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The University of Hull Nature and the Victorian Entrepreneur: Soap, Sunlight and Subjectivity being a thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of Hull by John Philip Bergin B.A.(Hons)(CNAA), M.A.(University of Lancaster) April 1998 Dedication To my Parents Lou and Bill Bergin erstwhile provider and promoter of Sunlight, respectively. 2 n Contents Page Dedication 2 List of Illustrations 4 Summary 5 Acknowledgments 6 Chapter One: Introduction 8 Chapter Two: Theoretical Overview 24 Chapter Three: On Nature 48 Chapter Four: Victorian Health and Hygiene 79 Chapter Five: Leverhulme: The Organisation of Hygiene 97 Chapter Six: Studying Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship 164 Chapter Seven: Order/Organisation 186 Chapter: Conclusions 206 Bibliography and References 217 Appendix 1: Lever Chronology 231 Appendix 2: On Soap and Saponides 234 3 List of Illustrations Plate 1 The Birth of Civilisation (Pears Soap Advertisement 1891) Page 7 Plate 2 Lord Leverhulme by Augustus John Page 96 Plate 3 "A clearer view of personal hygiene - Your invitation" Hakel Moists Publicity Page 141 Plate 4 Hudson's Soap Advertisement 1891 Page 200 4 Nature and the Victorian Entrepreneur: Soap, Sunlight and Subjectivity. Summary At the heart of any philosophical exercise lies an understanding, be it explicated or taken for granted, of Nature. This thesis explores how Nature may have come to be understood as it is in our everyday life in the late twentieth century. The life and work of one Victorian Entrepreneur - William Hesketh Lever, First Viscount Leverhulme of the Western Isles - is explored to reveal a cultural dynamic behind entrepreneurial activity. His personal philosophies, his legacy including Port Sunlight village, the Leverhulme Trust and the product for which he is best known, namely Sunlight Soap, are examined to reveal the extent to which his understanding of Nature impacted on his thought. What he expressed in his philosophy as his thought is questioned and it is suggested that in Leverhulme's life and work can be seen the organising dynamic of subjectivity. Leverhulme, it is suggested, was as subject to this process of organisation as were, and are, the consumers of his products. The symbolism of soap is explored through order, not only in the literal sense of personal and public hygiene but, also, by extension, of order in the wider sense, that of organisation. Thus this thesis extends from the analysis of soap as a product and its marketability through the metaphor of Sunlight, which is taken to stand for an idealized, anthropocentric Nature, an understanding of which underpins the sociology of order upon which much organisation is premised. Soap as an intimate tool of personal organisation, through its contact with the body and with clothing is taken, in Freud's terminology, to be a yardstick of civilization. As a permanent feature of the mass-consumer market it shares the physical intimacies of the body, the domestic economy of the household and, in the wider economy, the technological developments in the saponide industry, the regulation of the governance of the 'environment' as well as impacting on 'popular' culture. As such it is particularly susceptible to analysis through some of the work of Foucault, in particular his work on subjectivity, power/knowledge and technology of the self. 5 Acknowledgments In preparing this dissertation I know I owe debts to several people whom I have indulged over the years. It was Norman Jackson at the University of Newcastle- upon-Tyne and Pippa Carter of the University of Hull who wrote to me in Algeria enclosing information about opportunities for postgraduate study with which they were associated at the time. The impetus they gave then and the faith they have always shown in me has been constant and usually greater than the faith I have in myself. At the University of Hull, Patrick MacLagan has been of tremendous help and support from the time of my registration there. Bob Cooper, latterly at the University of Keele, has been a formative influence on a number of lives, not least mine; it is an influence which will remain for the remainder of my working life and one which will, I hope, continue to mitigate the effects of the brutal bureaucracy experienced both within and without formal organisations. Latterly, while working at the University of Wolverhampton, I have shared many thoughts, insights and doubts with a number of close colleagues. So thank you also Dave Young and Kevin Hogan. Inspiration has come from conversations with these and many others over more years than is fitting for a work of this nature. I hope that the indulgence and inspiration has been met with something that does justice to the contributions made by all of you, named and unnamed. Important, too, that I should mention Lynn with whom I have learnt much of life and labour and whose love has been a sustaining factor over the years. 6 The Birth Of Civilization Message From The Sea Plate 1 Pears Soap Advertisement 7 Chapter One Introduction In the past twenty years or so, but especially since the publication in 1979 of Sociological Paradigms and Organisational Analysis: Elements of the Sociology of Corporate Life, the study of formal organisations and the concept of organisation itself has been placed on a very wide footing. This thesis seeks to contribute further to the literature which has grown in the wake of Burrell and Morgan's seminal tome. At the heart of this thesis is the argument that the role of the entrepreneur extends beyond the taken-for-granted innovative economic activity so often associated with entrepreneurs to their being shapers of culture. Thus it attempts to move beyond an analysis of an organisation to an analysis of organisation itself with the entrepreneur at the focus of analysis. Prior to, and indeed to a large extent since, 1979, the concern of those writing on and theorizing organisations had as their main occupation the enhanced efficiency of organisational dynamics so that the outcome of much organisational analysis and research tends to be presented in terms of an enhanced economic return for the researched organisation, often expressed in monetary terms. In short the emphasis is on 'Getting a bigger bang for the buck'. At best, this type of work gives a partial account of organisational dynamics. That it dominates the field of research in organisation studies is symptomatic of the concerns of the economic system in which it is embedded, namely industrial and post-industrial capitalism. Organisations have been very successful at representing their interests. So has the system of industrial capitalism. However that they are successful by their own definition does not necessarily imply that they are good. What has emerged over 8 the past couple of centuries in the West is simply a form of organisation premised on values which have led to an understanding of economics in terms of monetary profit and loss. Economics, of course, can and does have a much wider meaning. Put simply it can be explained in terms of human interaction with its environment for the purposes of sustaining human life. The eco in the term economic is often overlooked or at least has taken on a meaning which serves the interests of organised capitalism. The Greek term oikos, which refers to the household, and from which the English words economic and economics derive, also alerts us to the rudimentary and less than glamourous nature of economic activity, that is the maintenance of life within the household. This dissertation seeks to explore the dynamics by which this understanding of economic activity came about. At its heart is the figure of William Hesketh Lever, First Viscount Leverhulme of the Western Isles (1851-1926). Leverhulme is the Victorian entrepreneur of the title. He is best known for the business which he founded with his brother and which survives today as Lever Brothers the soap and saponides manufacturing arm of Unilever, the giant Anglo-Dutch multinational. Lever at the time of his death was one of the wealthiest men in the United Kingdom and was the nation's second largest landowner after the crown. He rose to such prominence on the profit gained from the manufacturing of soap, the most famous of his brands being the Sunlight of this dissertation's title. He was by all accounts an extraordinarily successful entrepreneur. However it is not simply his success as an entrepreneur which makes him a suitable case for examination. Leverhulme's enterprise extended far beyond the manufacturing of soap to embrace social experiments at home and abroad, for example his model village at Port Sunlight on the Wirral and less sophisticated, but nonetheless adventurous, schemes in The Belgian Congo, the Solomon Islands and latterly on Harris and Lewis, the Western Isles in his title. He was keenly interested in architecture, tropical medicine and social welfare at home and abroad. He was keenly interested in fine art, was a watercolourist and established one of the largest 9 private collections of English art. Lever was also involved in local and national politics, being an MP in the second last Liberal government. Individually these achievements are considerable; taken together, Lever the soap manufacturer stands head an shoulders above his contemporaries. If one were to take a sideways glance around for characters of a similar standing in today's world, who does one see? In the United Kingdom well-known entrepreneurs frequently make the news and business pages of our press, for example Richard Branson of Virgin Group and Anita Roddick of The Body Shop. Internationally there are perhaps none greater than Bill Gates of Microsoft, the American computer software company, and Rupert Murdoch of News International and the various Sky Broadcasting operations, for example British Sky Broadcasting and Japanese Sky Broadcasting.