The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption

by Trentmann, Frank

• ISBN13: 9780199561216
• ISBN10: 0199561214
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780191624353
• Additional ISBN(s): 9780199689460
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-06-16
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The study of the desire, acquisition, use, and disposal of goods and services, consumption, has grown enormously in recent years, and has been the subject of major historiographical debates: did the eighteenth century bring a consumer revolution? Was there a great divergence between East and West? Did the twentieth century see the triumph of global consumerism? Questions of consumption have become defining topics in all branches of history, from gender and labour history to political history and cultural studies. The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumptionoffers a timely overview of how our understanding of consumption in history has changed in the last generation, taking the reader from the ancient period to the twenty-first century. It includes chapters on Asia, Europe, Africa, and North America, brings together new perspectives, highlights cutting-edge areas of research, and offers a guide through the main historiographical developments. Contributions from leading historians examine the spaces of consumption, consumer politics, luxury and waste, nationalism and empire, the body, well-being, youth cultures and fashion. The Handbook also showcases the different ways in which recent historians have approached the subject, from cultural and economic history, to political history and technology studies, including areas where multidisciplinary approaches have been especially fruitful.

Author Biography

Frank Trentmann was educated at Hamburg University, the London School of Economics, and Harvard University. Before joining Birkbeck, he was Assistant Professor at Princeton University. He has also been the director of the Cultures of Consumption research programme, co-funded by the ESRC and the AHRC, Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow at the European University Institute, and a visiting professor at Bielefeld University (Germany) and at the British Academy. His recent publications include Free Trade Nation: Consumption, Civil Society, and Commerce in Modern Britain (Oxford, 2008), which was awarded the Whitfield Prize by the Royal Historical Society.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. xi
Notes on Contributors	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 1
Traditions
Citizen Consumers: The Athenian Democracy and the Origins of Western Consumption	p. 23
Things in Between: Splendour and Excess in Ming China	p. 47
Material Culture in Seventeenth-Century 'Britain': The Matter of Domestic Consumption	p. 64
Africa and the Global Lives of Things	p. 85
Dynamics and Diffusion
Transatlantic Consumption	p. 111
The Global Exchange of Food and Drugs	p. 127
From India to the World: Cotton and Fashionability	p. 145
Rich and Poor
Luxury, the Luxury Trades, and the Roots of Industrial Growth: A Global Perspective	p. 173
City and Country: Home, Possessions, and Diet, Western Europe 1600-1800	p. 192
Standard of Living, Consumption, and Political Economy over the Past 500 Years	p. 211
Places of Consumption
Sites of Consumption in Early Modern Europe	p. 229
Public Spaces, Knowledge, and Sociability	p. 251
Small Shops and Department Stores	p. 267
Technologies and Practices
Comfort and Convenience: Temporality and Practice	p. 289
Consumption of Energy	p. 307
Waste	p. 326
Saving and Spending	p. 348
Eating	p. 376
State and Civil Society
Consumer Activism, Consumer Regimes, and the Consumer Movement: Rethinking the History of Consumer Politics in the United States	p. 399
Consumption and Nationalism: China	p. 418
National Socialism and Consumption	p. 433
Things under Socialism: The Soviet Experience	p. 451
Unexpected Subversions: Modern Colonialism, Globalization, and Commodity Culture	p. 467
Consumption, Consumerism, and Japanese Modernity	p. 485
Consumer movements	p. 505
The Politics of Everyday Life	p. 521
Identities
Status, Lifestyle, and Taste	p. 551
Domesticity and Beyond: Gender, Family, and Consumption in Modern Europe	p. 568
Children's Consumption in History	p. 585
Youth and Consumption	p. 601
Fashion	p. 618
Self and Body	p. 633
Consumption and Well-being	p. 653
Index	p. 673
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