A Cultural History of Shopping was a Library Journal Best in Reference selection for 2022. Across Europe, the Early Modern period was marked by political, religious and cultural upheaval, and saw the emergence of the first global economy, developments which profoundly impacted how people shopped and what they were able to buy. This volume engages with the key debates around continuity and change in consumer behavior in the 'long 16th century' and the ways in which shopping became an educational and exciting act for many women, men and children across the social spectrum: shops and market stalls were filled with an increasingly wide range of goods made by skilled craftspeople and transported by merchants making evermore ambitious and lucrative journeys across the world. Even servants and the poor were exposed to these new things, for they could consume by eye and ear what they could not afford to take home in material form. Although they did not yet have a word for the activity of “shopping,” in this period men and women came to understand that this activity was more than a functional act to acquire necessities. A Cultural History of Shopping in the Early Modern Age presents an overview of the period with themes addressing practices and processes; spaces and places; shoppers and identities; luxury and everyday; home and family; visual and literary representations; reputation, trust and credit; and governance, regulation and the state.

A Cultural History of Shopping was a Library Journal Best in Reference selection for 2022. In the modern consumer age that emerged after the First World War, shopping became a ubiquitous cultural practice. Despite its apparent universality, the historicity and contingency of shopping should not be ignored: its meaning was always inextricably linked to the political, material and economic contexts within which it took place. Gendered female for the most part, shopping continued to evoke different cultural responses, embraced as liberatory by some, condemned as frivolous by others. Business decisions and public policies helped construct the frameworks within which new, often American-led, shopping cultures emerged, from downtown department stores to chain stores to suburban shopping malls. The digital revolution in shopping that began in the last decade of the 20th century has changed the face of cities and towns and led to the closure of many bricks-and-mortar stores but, as this volume explores, the shopper remains very much at the center of Western capitalist societies. A Cultural History of Shopping in the Modern Age presents an overview of the period with themes addressing practices and processes; spaces and places; shoppers and identities; luxury and everyday; home and family; visual and literary representations; reputation, trust and credit; and governance, regulation and the state.

A Cultural History of Shopping was a Library Journal Best in Reference selection for 2022. The 'consumer revolution' of the 18th century has been the subject of much debate among historians but it seems clear there was also a 'retail revolution': a period of unprecedented growth in material goods was accompanied by a proliferation of retail spaces and techniques which brought new fashions and imported commodities to the homes of consumers. Governments responded to a growing culture of polite and civilized behavior across society by stimulating urban renewal for leisure and shopping: new pavements, street lighting, green promenades, theatres, coffee houses, and adjacent shopping streets were laid-out everywhere in Europe. As the 18th century drew to its close, 'shopping' had become a publicly accepted and celebrated leisure pursuit, gaining its proper meaning in multiple languages. A Cultural History of Shopping in the Age of Enlightenment presents an overview of the period with themes addressing practices and processes; spaces and places; shoppers and identities; luxury and everyday; home and family; visual and literary representations; reputation, trust and credit; and governance, regulation and the state.

A Cultural History of Shopping was a Library Journal Best in Reference selection for 2022. Throughout Europe, the collapse of Roman authority from the 5th century fractured existing networks of commerce and trade including shopping. The infrastructure of trade was slowly rebuilt over the centuries that followed with the growth of beach markets, emporia, seasonal fairs and periodic markets until, in the late Middle Ages, the permanent shop re-emerged as an established part of market spaces, both in towns and larger urban centers. Medieval society was a 'display culture' and by the 14th century there was a marked increase in the consumption of manufactures and imported goods among the lower classes as well as the elite. This volume surveys our understanding of medieval retail markets, shops and shopping from a range of perspectives - spatial, material culture, literary, archaeological and economic. A Cultural History of Shopping in the Middle Ages presents an overview of the period with themes addressing practices and processes; spaces and places; shoppers and identities; luxury and everyday; home and family; visual and literary representations; reputation, trust and credit; and governance, regulation and the state.

A Cultural History of Shopping was a Library Journal Best in Reference selection for 2022. Shopping emerged as a special pleasure and problem during the period between the revolutionary upheavals of the late 18th century and the opening salvoes of the Great War. New shops, new products, new class and gender ideologies, new standards of comfort and hygiene, and rising living standards for some meant that people, especially women, spent more time shopping and engaging in consumer-oriented activities beyond the walls of the shop. At the same time, social commentators, local and national authorities, economists, and many husbands became concerned about the 'dangers' of shopping, believing that the department store was emancipating women and destroying society in the process. This volume explores shopping in the 19th century as a varied and embedded social, political, economic, and cultural activity. It draws out the continuities with earlier periods as well as examining how the department store came to be seen as both symbol and generator of profound economic, social, and cultural change. A Cultural History of Shopping in the Age of Revolution and Empire presents an overview of the period with themes addressing practices and processes; spaces and places; shoppers and identities; luxury and everyday; home and family; visual and literary representations; reputation, trust and credit; and governance, regulation and the state.

Between 1700 and 1830, men and women in the English-speaking territories framing the Atlantic gained unprecedented access to material things. The British Atlantic was an empire of goods, held together not just by political authority and a common language, but by a shared material culture nourished by constant flows of commodities. Diets expanded to include exotic luxuries such as tea and sugar, the fruits of mercantile and colonial expansion. Homes were furnished with novel goods, like clocks and earthenware teapots, the products of British industrial ingenuity. This groundbreaking book compares these developments in Britain and North America, bringing together a multi-disciplinary group of scholars to consider basic questions about women, men, and objects in these regions. In asking who did the shopping, how things were used, and why they became the subject of political dispute, the essays show the profound significance of everyday objects in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world.

The 'consumer revolution' of the eighteenth century has been the subject of much debate among historians but it seems clear there was also a 'retail revolution': a period of unprecedented growth in material goods was accompanied by a proliferation of retail spaces and techniques which brought new fashions and imported commodities to the homes of consumers. Governments responded to a growing culture of polite and civilized behavior across society by stimulating urban renewal for leisure and shopping: new pavements, street lighting, green promenades, theatres, coffee houses and adjacent shopping streets were laid-out everywhere in Europe. As the eighteenth century drew to its close, 'shopping' had become a publicly accepted and celebrated leisure pursuit, gaining its proper meaning in multiple languages. A Cultural History of Shopping in the Age of Enlightenment presents an overview of the period with themes addressing practices and processes; spaces and places; shoppers and identities; luxury and everyday; home and family; visual and literary representations; reputation, trust and credit; and governance, regulation and the state. Book jacket.

Global warming and the future of the climate is one of the greatest challenges of our time, but what do we know about climate variations 500 years ago, or 5000 years ago? How can we know anything at all about the history of weather? What impact have climate changes had on human prosperity and the spirit of invention? In this major new book Wolfgang Behringer introduces us to the latest historical research on the development of the earth's climate. He focuses above all on the cultural reactions to climate change through the ages, showing how even minor changes in the climate sometimes resulted in major social, political and religious upheavals. By examining how our predecessors responded to climate changes, Behringer provides us with a fresh basis for thinking about how we might address the serious climatic challenges we face today.