The Environmental Conditions of the Working Class

Abstract

Both urban sociology in general and urban environmental justice studies began with Frederick Engels's seminal work The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 . Engels provided a walking tour of the environmental conditions in the manufacturing establishments and slums of the factory towns of England, together with a similar view of London. He addressed conditions of widespread pollution and helped lay the grounds for the development of social epidemiology. He connected this to his “Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy” that influenced his even more famous collaborator Karl Marx. For Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 was to be the first of a series of connected analyses of ecology that stretched through more than half a century and includedThe Housing Question andDialectics of Nature, making him one of the most important but underappreciated contributors to the development of environmental thought.