Regulation
The regulation of markets often requires the regulation of self-interest. Listening to what people said about the one tells us something about the other. In order to listen effectively, though, we need to reject the view that markets automatically either represent progress or decline, sin or salvation.
Their effects cannot be disembedded from the social institutions that create the environment in which they operate. Markets require not merely the rule of law and regulation of the state, but also the economic infrastructure of families and communities.Both Alice Clark and R. H. Tawney cautioned against an overly tri- umphalist vision of the transition to capitalism. We do not have to accept their idealized description of medieval society to appreciate their point: Changes in the regulation of self-interest have very different implications for strong and weak, rich and poor, men and women, old and young. Some changes may be liberating, as Weber emphasized. But the liberation of some individuals can lead to the neglect of others. If its eye becomes too large, the needle itself can fall apart.
Alice Clark urged us to consider how the growth of a market economy might weaken the family economy. The homemaker's needle and its thread became a metaphor for the process of repairing and maintaining the social fabric of early capitalist society. That fabric itself was oppressive, more strongly binding women than men. However, as the following chapters will show, the fear that it might unravel may have exerted even greater disciplinary force on women than the direct exercise of patriarchal power.