Trentmann, Frank (2006) The modern evolution of the consumer: meanings, knowledge, and identities before the age of affluence. In: Trentmann, Frank and Brewer, John (eds.) Consuming cultures, global perspectives: historical trajectories, transnational exchanges. Cultures of Consumption Series. Oxford, UK: Berg Publishers, pp. 19-69. ISBN 9781845202460.
Abstract
Globalization and consumerism are two of the buzzwords of the early twenty-first century. In Consuming Cultures, renowned scholars explore the links between modernity and consumption. The book fills a gap in contemporary thinking on the subject by approaching it from a truly global point-of-view. It draws on case studies from around the world, with Africa, Asia and Central America featuring as prominently as Western countries. A transnational perspective allows the authors to investigate the diversity of consumer cultures and the interaction between them. The authors look at the genealogy of the modern consumer and the development of consumer cultures, from the porcelain trade and consumption in Britain and China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to post Second World War developments in America and Japan, and the contemporary consumer politics of cosmopolitan citizenship. Challenging and pioneering, Consuming Cultures problematizes popular accounts of globalization and consumerism, decentring the West and concentrating on putting history back into these accounts. Book description from publisher's website: http://www.bergpublishers.com/?TabId=2322&v=1800968
Metadata
| Item Type: | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | This essay was presented at an international workshop of senior scholars by invitation: "Consumption, Modernity and the West: Re-thinking Narratives of Consumerism, California Institute of Technology, Passadena, 16-17 April 2004. It was also discussed as an invited paper to international conferences in New York and in Tokyo, organised by the US Social Science Research Council. A short version has been reprinted as "The Evolution of the Consumer: Meanings, Identities and Political Synapses Before the Age of Affluence" in Sheldon Garon and Patricia L. Maclachlan (eds.), "The Ambivalent Consumer: Questioning Consumption in East Asia and the West" (Cornell University Press, 2006), pp. 21-44, ISBN-13 978-0-8014-4487-6 (cloth); ISBN-13 978-0-8014-7302-9 (pbk) (This information provided by the author) |
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Historical Studies |
| Depositing User: | Ms Karyn Gowlett |
| Date Deposited: | 24 Sep 2009 14:58 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Aug 2023 16:48 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/809 |
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