Synopses & Reviews
Modern societies are consumer societies, but rigorous research into this dimension has only begun fairly recently. The knowledge that historians and social scientists have produced is impressive, but also bewilderingly diverse and sometimes conflicting. This comprehensive volume seeks to take stock of their work and discuss future research agendas. Drawing on a wide range of studies of Europe, the United States, Asia, and Africa, the contributions gathered here consider how political history, business history, the history of science, cultural history, gender history, intellectual history, anthropology, and even environmental history can help us decode modern consumer societies.
Review
'This volume will serve as a useful companion to those interested in the history of consumers and consumption and the historiography of these themes.' - Pamela Swett, associate professor and chair, Department of History, McMaster University
Synopsis
Drawing on a wide range of studies of Europe, the United States, Asia, and Africa, the contributions gathered here consider how political history, business history, the history of science, cultural history, gender history, intellectual history, anthropology, and even environmental history can help us decode modern consumer societies.
About the Author
Hartmut Berghoff is the director of the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC and Professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Göttingen in Germany. Previously he was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin and a Chandler International Visiting Scholar at Harvard Business School. His fields of expertise are the history of consumption, business history, immigration history, and the history of modern Germany. Uwe Spiekermann is the deputy director of the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC. He has held teaching and research positions in Göttingen, Bremen, Münster, London, Exeter, and Vienna, and he has served as managing director of a Heidelberg-based foundation for nutrition. His work focuses on consumption history, the history of science and knowledge, and modern German and American social and economic history.
Table of Contents
Taking Stock and Forging Ahead: The Past and Future of Consumption History - Hartmut Berghoff and Uwe Spiekermann * PART I: Consumption History Today * Consumption History in Europe: An Overview of Recent Trends - Heinz-Gerhard Haupt * Research on the History of Consumption in the USA: An Overview - Gary Cross * The Hidden Consumer: Consumption in the Economic History of Japan - Penelope Francks * Consumption, Identities, and Agency in Africa: An Overview - Hans Peter Hahn * PART II. Consumption and Historical Sub-Disciplines * The Business of Consumer Culture History: Systems, Interactions, and Modernization - Pamela Walker Laird * Affluence and Sustainability: Environmental History and the History of Consumption - Frank Uekoetter * Consumption Politics and Politicized Consumption: Monarchy, Republic, and Dictatorship in Germany, 1900-1939 - Hartmut Berghoff * Consumption and Space: Inner-City Pedestrian Malls and the Consequences of Changing Consumer Geographies - Jan Logemann * Continental Europeans Respond to American Consumer Culture: Jürgen Habermas, Roland Barthes, and Umberto Eco - Daniel Horowitz * PART III. Case Studies * "Gods Own Consumers": Billy Graham, Mass Evangelism, and Consumption in the United States during the 1950s - Uta Andrea Balbier * A Historical Herbal: Household Medicine and Herbal Commerce in a Developing Consumer Society - Susan Strasser * Science, Fruits, and Vegetables: A Case Study on the Interaction of Knowledge and Consumption in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Germany - Uwe Spiekermann * An Ambivalent Embrace: Businessmen, Mass Consumption, and Visions of America in the Third Reich - S. Jonathan Wiesen