Getting and Spending

ISBN-13: 9780521626941 / Angielski / Miękka / 1998 / 492 str.

Susan Strasser; Matthias Judt; Charles McGovern

Opis

The history of consumption is a prism through which many aspects of social and political life may be viewed. The essays in this collection represent a variety of approaches and raise such themes as consumption and democracy, the development of a global economy, the role of the state, the centrality of consumption to Cold War politics, the importance of the Second World War as a historical divide, the language of consumption, the contexts of locality, race, ethnicity, gender, and class, and the environmental consequences of twentieth-century consumer society. They explore the role of the historian as social, political, and moral critic. Unlike other studies of twentieth-century consumption, this book provides international comparisons.

Recenzje

"In October 1995, scholars gathered at the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C., to contemplate the similarities and differences among twentieth-century consumer societies. The end product of that meeting is Getting and Spending, a cutting-edge anthology containing twent-one essays on consumerism by some of the field's pioneering researchers, including university and museum scholars...This milestone volume on the political economy of modern consumer societies will leaves a deep mark, influencing debates on the subject far into the future...A masterful and groundbreaking work, Getting and Spending will keep historians of consumer society engaged for years to come." Enterprise & Society

Spis treści

Preface; Introduction; Part I. Politics, Markets, and the State: 1. The consumers' White Label campaign of the National Consumers' League, 1898–1918; 2. Democracy and political identity in the consumer society; 3. Changing consumption Regimes in Europe, 1930–1970; 4. Consumer research as public relations: General Motors in the 1930s; 5. The New Deal State and the making of citizen consumers; 6. Consumer spending as state Project: yesterday's solutions and today's problems; 7. The Emigré as celebrant of American consumer culture: George Katona and Ernest Dichter; 8. Dissolution of the 'dictatorship over needs'? consumer behavior and economic reform in East Germany in the 1960s; Part II. Everyday Life: 9. World War I and the creation of desire for cars in Germany; 10. Gender, generation, and consumption in the United States: working-class families in the interwar period; 11. Comparing apples and oranges: housewives and the politics of consumption in interwar Germany; 12. 'The convenience is out of this world': the garbage disposer and American consumer culture; 13. Consumer culture in the GDR, or how the struggle for antimodernity was lost on the battleground of consumer culture; 14. Changes in consumption as social practice in West Germany during the 1950s; 15. Reshaping shopping environments: the competition between the city of Boston and its suburbs; 16. Toys, socialization, and the commodification of play; 17. The 'syndrome of the 1950s' in Switzerland: cheap energy, mass consumption, and the environment; 18. Reflecting on Ethnic Imagery in the Landscape of commerce, 1945–1975; Part III. History and Theory: 19. Modern subjectivity and consumer culture; 20. Consumption and consumer society: a contribution to the history of ideas; 21. Reconsidering abundance: a plea for ambiguity.