The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption

Edited by Frank Trentmann

Oxford Handbooks

The first guide to the historical literature on consumption from ancient Greece to the contemporary world
Brings together 35 leading experts on consumption
Each chapter identifies major historiographical debates, and looks ahead to future research agendas

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption

Edited by Frank Trentmann

Description

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 Consumption offers 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.

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption

Edited by Frank Trentmann

Oxford Handbooks

Introduction, Frank Trentmann
Part I: Traditions
1. Citizen Consumers: The Athenian Democracy and the Origins of Western Consumption, James Davidson
2. Things in Between: Splendour and Excess in Ming China, Craig Clunas
3. Material Culture in Seventeenth-century 'Britain': the Matter of Domestic Consumption, Sara Pennell
4. Africa and the Global Lives of Things, Jeremy Prestholdt
Part II: Dynamics and Diffusion
5. Transatlantic Consumption, Michelle Craig McDonald
6. The Global Exchange of Food and Drugs, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto with the assistance of Benjamin Sacks
7. From India to the World: Cotton and Fashionability, Prasannan Parthasarathi and Giorgio Riello
Part III: Rich and Poor
8. Luxury, the Luxury Trades, and the Roots of Industrial Growth: A Global Perspective, Maxine Berg
9. City and Country: Home, Possessions, and Diet, Western Europe 1600-1800, Dominique Margairaz
10. Standard of Living, Consumption, and Political Economy over the Past 500 Years, Carole Shammas
11. Sites of Consumption in Early Modern Europe, Evelyn Welch
12. Public Spaces, Knowledge, and Sociability, Brian Cowan
13. Small Shops and Department Stores, Heinz-Gerhard Haupt
Part V: Technologies and Practices
14. Comfort and Convenience: Temporality and Practice, Elizabeth Shove
15. Consumption of Energy, David E. Nye
16. Waste, Joshua Goldstein
17. Saving and Spending, Lendol Calder
18. Eating, Alan Warde
Part VI: State and Civil Society
19. Consumer Activism, Consumer Regimes, and the Consumer Movement: Rethinking the History of Consumer Politics in the United States, Lawrence B. Glickman
20. Consumption and Nationalism: China, Karl Gerth
21. National Socialism and Consumption, S. Jonathan Wiesen
22. Things under Socialism: the Soviet Experience, Sheila Fitzpatrick
23. Unexpected Subversions: Modern Colonialism, Globalization, and Commodity Culture, Timothy Burke
24. Consumption, Consumerism, and Japanese Modernity, Andrew Gordon
25. Consumer movements, Matthew Hilton
26. The Politics of Everyday Life, Frank Trentmann
Part VII: Identities
27. Status, Lifestyle, and Taste, Mike Savage
28. Domesticity and Beyond: Gender, Family, and Consumption in Modern Europe, Enrica Asquer
29. Children's Consumption in History, Daniel Thomas Cook
30. Youth and consumption, Paolo Capuzzo
31. Fashion, Christopher Breward
32. Self and Body, Roberta Sassatelli
33. Consumption and Well-Being, Avner Offer

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption

Edited by Frank Trentmann

Oxford Handbooks

Author Information

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.

Contributors:

Enrica Asquer, the University of Sassari, Italy
Maxine Berg, Professor of History, University of Warwick
Christopher Breward, Head of Research at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Timothy Burke, Professor of History, Swarthmore College
Lendol Calder, Professor of American History, Augustana College, Illinois
Paolo Capuzzo, Professor of Contemporary History, University of Bologna
Craig Clunas, Professor of the History of Art, the University of Oxford
Daniel Thomas Cook, Associate Professor of Childhood Studies and Sociology, Rutgers University, Camden, New Jersey
Brian Cowan, Canada Research Chair in Early Modern British History, McGill University, Montreal
James Davidson, Professor of Ancient History, University of Warwick.
Felipe Fernández-Armesto, William P. Reynolds Professor of Arts and Letters, Notre Dame
Sheila Fitzpatrick, Bernadotte E. Schmitt Distinguished Service Professor in Modern Russian History, University of Chicago
Dr Karl Gerth, Oxford University
Lawrence B. Glickman, Carolina Trustee Professor of History, University of South Carolina
Joshua Goldstein, Associate Professor of Modern Chinese History, University of Southern California
Andrew Gordon, Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Professor of History, Harvard University
Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, Professor of European History, the University of Bielefeld and the European University Institute, Florence
Matthew Hilton, Professor of Social History, University of Birmingham
Dominique Jeanne Margairaz, Professor of Modern History, Université Paris 1-Panthéon Sorbonnedepuis
Michelle Craig McDonald, associate professor of Early American and Atlantic history, Richard Stockton College
David E. Nye, Professor of American Studies, University of Southern Denmark
Avner Offer, Chichele Professor of Economic History, University of Oxford
Prasannan Parthasarathi, Boston College
Sara Pennell, senior lecturer in history, Roehampton University, London
Jeremy Prestholdt, Associate Professor of African History, University of California, San Diego
Giorgio Riello, Associate Professor in Global History and Culture, University of Warwick
Roberta Sassatelli, Professor of Cultural Sociology, University of Milan
Mike Savage, Professor of Sociology, University of York
Elizabeth Shove, Professor of Sociology, Lancaster University
Carole Shammas holds the John R. Hubbard Chair in History, University of Southern California
Frank Trentmann, Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London
Alan Warde, Professor of Sociology, University of Manchester, and Jane and Aatos Erkko Visiting Professor, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
Evelyn Welch, Professor of Renaissance Studies, Queen Mary University of London
S. Jonathan Wiesen, Associate Professor of History, Southern Illinois University Carbondale