A History of Everyday Things: The Birth of Consumption in France, 1600–1800

by Daniel Roche , Translated by Brian Pearce

• ISBN13: 9780521633291
• ISBN10: 052163329X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-03-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Things which we regard as the everyday objects of consumption (and hence re-purchase), and essential to any decent, civilised lifestyle, have not always been so: in former times, everyday objects would have passed from one generation to another, without anyone dreaming of acquiring new ones. How, therefore, have people in the modern world become 'prisoners of objects', as Rousseau put it? The celebrated French cultural historian Daniel Roche answers this fundamental question using insights from economics, politics, demography and geography, as well as his own extensive historical knowledge. Professor Roche places familiar objects and commodities - houses, clothes, water - in their wider historical and anthropological contexts, and explores the origins of some of the daily furnishings of modern life. A History of Everyday Things is a pioneering essay that sheds light on the origins of the consumer society and its social and political repercussions, and thereby the birth of the modern world.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	ix
Introduction: culture and material civilisation	i
Part I Production and consumption
The natural framework and the human framework	11	(20)
Goods in history	11	(8)
Stability and change	19	(12)
Towns, trade and inventions	31	(23)
The weight of the town	33	(6)
The towns and consumption	39	(4)
Business and industry, trade and services	43	(3)
The experience of urban life	46	(8)
Ordinary consumption and luxury consumption	54	(27)
Budgets a la Marshal Vauban	55	(7)
Eighteenth-century budget investigations	62	(10)
From scarcity to luxury	72	(9)
Part II Ordinary life
Rural and urban houses	81	(25)
Habitat and everyday life	82	(7)
The traditional rural house, between custom and innovation	89	(17)
Lighting and heating	106	(29)
Cold and heat, light and darkness	106	(4)
Night and day	110	(5)
The pedagogy of lighting	115	(4)
The conquests of light, urban lighting	119	(4)
Heat and cold	123	(7)
Wood, coal, supplies and technical reflections	130	(5)
Water and its uses	135	(31)
The pressure on water	136	(2)
The utility and sacredness of water	138	(3)
The production of water	141	(12)
Natural and social constraints	153	(4)
Clean and dirty, wholesome and unwholesome	157	(9)
Furniture and objects	166	(27)
The demands of usage	167	(3)
The space of a material art	170	(7)
Production and consumption of furniture	177	(4)
Return to function, utility and change	181	(4)
Storing, classifying, receiving	185	(8)
Clothing and appearances	193	(28)
Words and things in the history of clothing	193	(3)
Hierarchy, fashion, totality	196	(5)
Codes and principles, manners and sumptuary laws	201	(4)
Towns and prosperity, a first change	205	(8)
From Paris to the provinces, the change in the eighteenth century	213	(8)
Bread, wine, taste	221	(29)
Need, labour, symbol	222	(3)
Consumption, food products and expenditure on them	225	(10)
Bread and wine, from Holy Communion to good manners	235	(7)
New knowledge, new consumer goods	242	(8)
Conclusion	250	(6)
Notes	256	(30)
Bibliography	286	(19)
Index	305