D’autres formes de bienveillance : la capacité d’agir, la dépendance et les bibliothèques de prêt de l’American Seamen’s Friend Society

Auteurs-es

  • Jane McCamant

DOI :

https://doi.org/10.25071/2561-5467.1404

Mots-clés :

literacy, religious conversion, sailors, books and reading, merchant mariners

Résumé

Cet article évalue le succès des bibliothèques de prêt de l’American Seamen’s Friend Society (ASFS). Il présente une analyse de 20 rapports soumis à l’ASFS par des bibliothécaires navigants entre 1865 et 1867. L’analyse de ces rapports et de leur présentation dans les publications de l’ASFS révèle la relation paradoxale que l’ASFS entretenait avec les stéréotypes associés aux marins. Dans l’image que l’ASFS se faisait des marins et dans sa gestion des bibliothèques de prêt, ces marins devaient adopter une posture de dépendance morale. L’article conclut en proposant que le modèle de Herbert Blumer, selon lequel les problèmes sociaux sont constitués par l’action collective, offre une perspective fructueuse permettant de considérer la bienveillance des marins en général, et un cadre pertinent pour poursuivre les études sur les bibliothèques de prêt en particulier.

Biographie de l'auteur-e

Jane McCamant

Jane McCamant is a librarian and archivist living in Boston. She holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Chicago and has published on the history of moral and religious education in the United States. This article was originally researched and written in 2009 at the Frank C. Munson Institute of American Maritime Studies and was then revised for presentation at the annual meeting of the North American Society for Oceanic History. It won the Clark G. Reynolds Student Paper Award in 2013.

Références

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Ames, Nathaniel. Nautical Reminiscences. Providence, 1832.

Blumer, Herbert. “Social Problems as Collective Behavior.” Social Problems 18, no. 3 (Winter 1971): 298–306. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/799797

Dana, Richard Henry, Jr. Two Years Before the Mast. P.F. Collier & Son, 1909.

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Davis, Hugh H. Joshua Leavitt: Evangelical Abolitionist. Louisiana State University Press, 1990.

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Gaylin, Willard. Doing Good: The Limits of Benevolence. Pantheon Books, 1978. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/1971736

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Lemisch, Jesse. “Jack Tar in the Streets: Merchant Seamen in the Politics of Revolutionary America.” William and Mary Quarterly 25, no. 3 (July 1968): 371–407. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/1921773

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Stam, David H. “The Lord’s Librarians: The American Seamen’s Friend Society and their Loan Libraries, 1837–1967.” Coriolis 3, no. 1 (2012): 45–59.

Masthead of The Life-Boat, February 1866

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Publié-e

2026-07-08

Comment citer

McCamant, J. (2026). D’autres formes de bienveillance : la capacité d’agir, la dépendance et les bibliothèques de prêt de l’American Seamen’s Friend Society. The Northern Mariner Le Marin Du Nord, 35(3-4), 275–290. https://doi.org/10.25071/2561-5467.1404