Consumption and the World of Goods

by John Brewer (Editor), Roy Porter (Editor)

The study of past society in terms of what it consumes rather than what it produces is - relatively speaking - a new development. The focus on consumption changes the whole emphasis and structure of historical enquiry. While human beings usually work within a single trade or industry as producers , as, say, farmers or industrial workers, as consumers they are active in many different markets or networks. And while history written from a production viewpoint has, by chance or design, largely been centred on the work of men, consumption history helps to restore women o the mainstream.
The history of consumption demands a wide range of skills. It calls upon the methods and techniques of many other disciplines, including archaeology, sociology, social and economic history, anthropology and art criticism. But it is not simply a melting-pot of techniques and skills, brought to bear on a past epoch. Its objectives amount to a new description of a past culture in its totality, as perceived through its patterns of consumption in goods and services.
Consumption and the World of Goods is the first of three volumes to examine history from this perspective, and is a unique collaboration between twenty-six leading subject specialists from Europe and North America. The outcome is a new interpretation of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, one that shapes a new historical landscape based on the consumption of goods and services.

Genres: History, Academic

652 pages, Paperback

First published March 10, 1993

Reviews

[Martine Bailey]

I can’t say I’ve read every page of this 650 page doorstep but I have read the essays I’m interested in. The main attraction was Amanda Vickery’s ‘Women and the world of goods’ which was mildly disappointing as it seemed to me to cover very similar ground to The Gentleman’s Daughter, being largely about the same character, Elizabeth Shackleton, and her relationships with material objects. It was as ever a pleasure to re-read these accounts but I don’t think there was anything new.
Roy Porter’s essay on ‘Consumption’ was terrific, but an essay on European and Asian trade was as dry as dust to me, and a few other essays drifted into pretentious academe-speak. Overall, at £70 for the whole doorstop, I’m glad I borrowed it from the library.

[Arjun Pathy]

Jan de Vries on purchasing power - the explication of the industrious revolution as an explanation for simultaneous falling real wages and growing consumption is very compelling and has ideological implications for present consumption. In short, self exploitation for the sake of access to new goods.

[Freddie Bishop]

How Burke views history through a lens of deconstructing colonial narratives is admirable, that paired with his flowing prose always makes him a pleasure to read.

[Julaine]

DONE, RETURNED