Consuming Cultures, Global Perspectives: Historical Trajectories, Transnational Exchanges

Description

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.

John Brewer is Professor of History and Literature at the California Institute of Technology. His book The Pleasure of Imagination: English Culture in the 18th Century (HarperCollins, 1997) won the Wolfson History Prize. Frank Trentmann is Professor of Modern History at Birkbeck College, London, and Director of the Cultures of Consumption Research Programme (ESRC-AHRC).

'We may live today in a global consumer society, but until Brewer and Trentmann's important book the study of consumption remained tied to narrowly defined times and places. They offer us an enticing feast of new insights spanning East and West, North and South, past and present, consuming and resisting. Indulge yourself!' Lizabeth Cohen, Harvard University and author of A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America 'There may be lots of books on consumption, but very few of them reach anywhere close to the novelty and verve of this book. By concentrating on the multiple histories and geographies of the world of goods, the editors have produced a collection in which consumer objects speak back to us in all their density of use and meaning. A vital text.' Nigel Thrift, University of Oxford 'Genuinely international and cross-disciplinary perspectives are promised and delivered.' Economic History Review 'This edited book is a contribution to the recent upsurge in research in to the history of consumption.' Journal of Consumer Policy