Empire of Things Quotes

“Galbraith, tellingly, drew a line between ‘simple modes of enjoyment’ (he included here sport, food and houses as well as cars and sex) and more ‘esoteric’ ones such as music, fine art ‘and to some extent travel’. The first group required ‘little prior preparation of the subject for its highest enjoyment’ and was thus the target of ‘modern want creation’. The latter, by contrast, were more distinctly individual and had to be cultivated.”
― Frank Trentmann, Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First

“in the real world, religious life does not exist in a purely spiritual form. It is saturated with things.”
― Frank Trentmann, Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First

“Mirrors and soap would teach self-discipline. Polished shoes, clean shirts and a shaved face signalled an inner purity that could be monitored by others as well as by oneself.”
― Frank Trentmann, Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First

“The internet has added a new layer, not created a revolutionary break.”
― Frank Trentmann, Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First

“Recycling has been little more than a comforting distraction from the stuff that really matters.”
― Frank Trentmann, Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First

“According to a number of recent commentators, we are already living in the twilight years of the empire of things. They announce the coming of ‘dematerialization’ and ‘post-consumerism’, marked by a growing interest in experiences, emotions and services, a revival of repairing, and the spread of leasing initiatives and sharing networks enabled by the internet.4 By 2015, almost a thousand repair cafés had sprung up in the richest corners of consumer societies in Western Europe and North America.”
― Frank Trentmann, Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First

“In Russia, serfs were breaking out of self-sufficiency and began buying and selling goods at weekly markets and nearby fairs in the 1820s, a generation before their emancipation in 1861.”
― Frank Trentmann, Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First