This volume offers the most comprehensive and incisive exploration of American consumer history to date, spanning the four centuries from the colonial era to the present.

Die vorliegende Studie stellt eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit der amerikanischen Konsumkultur des 20. Jahrhunderts dar. Dabei wird ein Schwerpunkt auf die historische Entwicklung von der Ständegesellschaft des späten 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhunderts bis hin zur Klassengesellschaft des 20. Jahrhunderts gelegt, da dieser epochale Wandel in bisherigen vergleichbaren literaturwissenschaftlichen Diskussionen zur Konsumkultur trotz seiner themenbezogenen Relevanz keine adäquate Berücksichtigung fand. Der Begriff der Konsumkultur als interdisziplinäres Problem wird nicht als gegeben verstanden und ausführlich definiert. Die soziokulturelle Entwicklung wird im Rahmen von F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby (1925) und Bret Easton Ellis American Psycho (1991) nachvollzogen, da beide Werke ihre Hauptdarsteller anhand ihrer sozialen Herkunft, ihrer sozialen Milieus und ihres Konsums als stereotypische Vertreter der jeweiligen Epoche charakterisieren und versinnbildlichen. In beiden Werken wird der jeweilige kulturelle Hintergrund – das amerikanische Jazz Age sowie die Reagan Administration mit ihrer Yuppie Kultur – äußerst kritisch abgehandelt. Eine vergleichende Analyse beider Werke in Bezug auf die gravierende Entwicklung ihrer literarischen Darstellung von Konsum im Verlauf des 20. Jahrhunderts unter kritischer Berücksichtigung des jeweiligen volkswirtschaftlichen, politischen und gesellschaftlichen Hintergrunds wurde in dieser Form noch nicht veröffentlicht. Ein Fokus dieser Arbeit betrifft die Zwischenkriegszeit in Jahren von 1920 bis 1930, da diese Dekade maßgebend war für den epochalen Wandel der amerikanischen Klassen- hin zu einer Konsumgesellschaft und des amerikanischen Lebensstils zum Ende der 1980er Jahre. Detailliert betrachtet werden in diesem Zusammenhang konkrete Konsumverstärker wie fortschreitende Technologien, Entwicklungen zu Mode- und Freizeitbranchen, finanzielle Marktentwicklungen und der geografische Wandel. Die Entstehung der World Trade Organisation symbolisiert letztendlich den Sieg von Demokratie und amerikanisierter, globaler Konsumkultur. Anhand der genannten Werke wird nicht nur der Umgang mit Konsum interpretiert, sondern auch dessen Versprechen, die propagierende Darstellung des amerikanischen Traumes, die eine gravierende Veränderung hin zum kapitalistischen Materialismus aufzeigt.

The Encyclopedia of Consumer Culture is the first reference work to outline the parameters of consumer culture and provide a critical, scholarly resource on consumption and consumerism.

The author is a proud sponsor of the 2020 SAGE Keith Roberts Teaching Innovations Award—enabling graduate students and early career faculty to attend the annual ASA pre-conference teaching and learning workshop. Consumer Culture and Society offers an introduction to the study of consumerism and mass consumption from a sociological perspective. It examines what we buy, how and where we consume, the meanings attached to the things we purchase, and the social forces that enable and constrain consumer behavior. Opening chapters provide a theoretical overview and history of consumer society and featured case studies look at mass consumption in familiar contexts, such as tourism, food, and higher education. The book explores ethical and political concerns, including consumer activism, indebtedness, alternative forms of consumption, and dilemmas surrounding the globalization of consumer culture.

Recent work has focused on the politics of consumption and its manifestation in a number of situations. This volume extends these debates, providing a tighter focus and contributing to a noticeable gap in the field that numerous scholars are beginning to turn towards: that is, organizations of consumers themselves who have chosen to speak for all consumers and similar such bodies of experts which act on behalf of consumers. The volume is fortunate in drawing upon a number of scholars who are about to publish major works on the subject, but who are happy to provide summary versions of their work for the volume. The book pays particular attention to specific moments in consumer mobilization and expertise, capturing the range of types of expert consumers across the twentieth century, from ethical consumer groups at the beginning, to intellectuals, housewives, economists and public officials. It addresses questions on the nature of consumer organizing, which bodies can speak for consumers, whether one consumer voice can ever be identified and the relationship between consumption and citizenship. Overview pieces demonstrate the larger narratives involved in the study of the expert consumer, whilst more comparative essays set out the nature of transatlantic exchanges. Other contributions point to the similarities across seemingly different consumption regimes, while case studies of specific organisations and key historical moments draw out the particularities of consumer expertise.

"This study shows how goods and consumption embodied modernity in the time of Porfirio Diaz. Through case studies of tobacco marketing, department stores, advertising, shoplifting, and a famous jewelry robbery and homicide, he provides a tour of daily life in Porfirian Mexico City, overturning conventional wisdom that only the middle and upper classes participated in this culture"--Provided by publisher.

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.

The term 'consumption' covers the desire for goods and services, their acquisition, use, and disposal. The study of consumption has grown enormously in recent years, and it 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.

This book provides insight into the impact the 2007/8 financial crisis and subsequent Great Recession had on American fiction. Employing an interdisciplinary approach which combines literary studies with anthropology, economics, sociology, and psychology, the author attempts to gauge the changes that the crisis facilitated in the American novel. Focusing on four books, Elizabeth Strout’s My Name Is Lucy Barton, Philipp Meyer’s American Rust, Sophie McManus’s The Unfortunates, and William Gibson’s The Peripheral, the study traces how they present such issues as poverty, wealth, equality, distinction, opportunity, and how they relate both to traditional criticisms of consumer culture and the US economy, particularly those issues that have received more attention as a result of the crisis. It also tackles the issue of genre and interpretation in this period, as well as what methods the analyzed novels employ in order to highlight the decreasing social mobility of Americans.

This groundbreaking book examines the relationship between the development of the consumer society and the rise of collecting by individuals and institutions. Rusell Belk considers how and why people collect, as individuals, corporations and museums, and the impact this collecting has on us and our culture. Collecting in a Consumer Society outlines the history of museum collecting from ancient civilizations to the present. It also looks at aspects of consumer culture - advertizing, department stores, mass merchandizing, consumer desires, and how this relates to the activity of collecting. Collecting in a Consumer Society is the first book to focus on collecting as material consumption. This is a provocative and engaging book, essential reading for anyone involved with the process of collecting.