Alternative Exchanges

by Fontaine, Laurence

• ISBN13: 9781845452452
• ISBN10: 1845452453
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-04-30
• Publisher: Berghahn Books

Summary

Exchanges have always had more than economic significance: values circulate and encounters become institutionalized. This volume explores the changing meaning of the circulation of second-hand goods from the Renaissance to today, and thereby examines the blurring of boundaries between market, gifts, and charity. It describes the actors of the market - official entities such as corporations, recognized professions, and established markets but also the subterranean circulation that develops around the need for money. The complex layers that not only provide for numerous intermediaries but also include the many men and women who, as sellers or buyers, use these circulations on countless occasions are also examined. Laurence Fontainestudied History and Sociology at Paris-Sorbonne University and was appointed by the C.N.R.S. in 1989. She was Professor in the History Department of the European University Institute, Florence, Italy from 1995 until 2003 and is currently Directrice de Recherche in the C.N.R.S., attached to the EHESS in Paris.

Author Biography

Laurence Fontaine studied History and Sociology at Paris-Sorbonne University and was appointed by the C.N.R.S. in 1989. She was Professor in the History Department of the European University Institute, Florence, Italy from 1995 until 2003 and is currently Directrice de Recherche in the C.N.R.S., attached to the EHESS in Paris.

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables
Introduction	p. 1
Second-hand Dealers in the Early Modern Low Countries: Institutions, Markets and Practices	p. 13
Using Things as Money: An Example from Late Renaissance Rome	p. 43
Prostitution and the Circulation of Second-hand Goods in Early Modern Rome	p. 61
"The Magazine of All Their Pillaging": Armies as Sites of Second-hand Exchanges during the French Wars of Religion	p. 76
The Exchange of Second-hand Goods between Survival Strategies and "Business" in Eighteenth-century Paris	p. 97
Uses of the Used: The Conventions of Renewing and Exchanging Goods in French Provincial Aristocracy	p. 115
The Scope and Structure of the Nineteenth-century Second-hand Trade in the Parisian Clothes Market	p. 127
"What Goes 'Round Comes 'Round": Second-hand Clothing, Furniture and Tools in Working-class Lives in the Interwar USA	p. 152
Moving On: Overlooked Aspects of Modern Collecting	p. 165
The Second-hand Car Market as a Form of Resistance	p. 186
Utopia Postponed? The Rise and Fall of Barter Markets in Argentina, 1995-2004	p. 208
Charity, Commerce, Consumption: The International Secondhand Clothing Trade at the Turn of the Millennium - Focus on Zambia	p. 221
Conclusion	p. 235
Bibliography	p. 244
Notes on Contributors	p. 263
Index	p. 265
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.