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Author: Mary Douglas Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1000358119 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 167
Book Description
It is well-understood that the consumption of goods plays an important, symbolic role in the way human beings communicate, create identity, and establish relationships. What is less well-known is that the pattern of their flow shapes society in fundamental ways. In this book the renowned anthropologist Mary Douglas and economist Baron Isherwood overturn arguments about consumption that rely on received economic and psychological explanations. They ask new questions about why people save, why they spend, what they buy, and why they sometimes-but not always-make fine distinctions about quality. Instead of regarding consumption as a private means of satisfying one’s preferences, they show how goods are a vital information system, used by human beings to fulfill their intentions towards one another. They also consider the implications of the social role of goods for a new vision for social policy, arguing that poverty is caused as much by the erosion of local communities and networks as it is by lack of possessions, and contrast small-scale with large-scale consumption in the household. A radical rethinking of consumerism, inequality and social capital, The World of Goods is a classic of economic anthropology whose insights remain compelling and urgent. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new foreword by Richard Wilk. "Forget that commodities are good for eating, clothing, and shelter; forget their usefulness and try instead the idea that commodities are good for thinking." – Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood
Author: Mary Douglas Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1000358119 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 167
Book Description
It is well-understood that the consumption of goods plays an important, symbolic role in the way human beings communicate, create identity, and establish relationships. What is less well-known is that the pattern of their flow shapes society in fundamental ways. In this book the renowned anthropologist Mary Douglas and economist Baron Isherwood overturn arguments about consumption that rely on received economic and psychological explanations. They ask new questions about why people save, why they spend, what they buy, and why they sometimes-but not always-make fine distinctions about quality. Instead of regarding consumption as a private means of satisfying one’s preferences, they show how goods are a vital information system, used by human beings to fulfill their intentions towards one another. They also consider the implications of the social role of goods for a new vision for social policy, arguing that poverty is caused as much by the erosion of local communities and networks as it is by lack of possessions, and contrast small-scale with large-scale consumption in the household. A radical rethinking of consumerism, inequality and social capital, The World of Goods is a classic of economic anthropology whose insights remain compelling and urgent. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new foreword by Richard Wilk. "Forget that commodities are good for eating, clothing, and shelter; forget their usefulness and try instead the idea that commodities are good for thinking." – Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood
Author: Ann Smart Martin Publisher: JHU Press ISBN: 0801887275 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 285
Book Description
Cowinner, 2008 Fred Kniffen Book Award. Pioneer America Society/Association for the Preservation of Landscapes and Artifacts How did people living on the early American frontier discover and then become a part of the market economy? How do their purchases and their choices revise our understanding of the market revolution and the emerging consumer ethos? Ann Smart Martin provides answers to these questions by examining the texture of trade on the edge of the upper Shenandoah Valley between 1760 and 1810. Reconstructing the world of one country merchant, John Hook, Martin reveals how the acquisition of consumer goods created and validated a set of ideas about taste, fashion, and lifestyle in a particular place at a particular time. Her analysis of Hook's account ledger illuminates the everyday wants, transactions, and tensions recorded within and brings some of Hook's customers to life: a planter looking for just the right clock, a farmer in search of nails, a young woman and her friends out shopping on their own, and a slave woman choosing a looking glass. This innovative approach melds fascinating narratives with sophisticated analysis of material culture to distill large abstract social and economic systems into intimate triangulations among merchants, customers, and objects. Martin finds that objects not only reflect culture, they are the means to create it.
Author: John Brewer Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1136157603 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 651
Book Description
The study of past society in terms of what it consumes rather than what it produces is - relatively speaking - a new development. The focus on consumption changes the whole emphasis and structure of historical enquiry. While human beings usually work within a single trade or industry as producers, as, say, farmers or industrial workers, as consumers they are active in many different markets or networks. And while history written from a production viewpoint has, by chance or design, largely been centred on the work of men, consumption history helps to restore women o the mainstream. The history of consumption demands a wide range of skills. It calls upon the methods and techniques of many other disciplines, including archaeology, sociology, social and economic history, anthropology and art criticism. But it is not simply a melting-pot of techniques and skills, brought to bear on a past epoch. Its objectives amount to a new description of a past culture in its totality, as perceived through its patterns of consumption in goods and services. Consumption and the World of Goods is the first of three volumes to examine history from this perspective, and is a unique collaboration between twenty-six leading subject specialists from Europe and North America. The outcome is a new interpretation of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, one that shapes a new historical landscape based on the consumption of goods and services.
Author: Lisa Jardine Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company ISBN: 9780393318661 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 516
Book Description
'Worldly Goods' provides a radical interpretation of the Golden Age of European culture. During the Renaissance, Jardine argues, vicious commercial battles were being fought over silks and spices, and who should control international trade.
Author: Mary Douglas Publisher: Psychology Press ISBN: 9780415130462 Category : Reference Languages : en Pages : 169
Book Description
When an anthropologist and an economist combine to write a book about consumption it is not a sermon against materialism, nor a moan against consumerism. The World of Goods, in this new edition with a new introduction, bridges a gap between what economists say about the specialized topic called consumption behavior, and what anthropologists know about why people want things. The economist assumes the desire for objects is an individual psychological urge. The anthropologist assumes objects are desired for giving away, or sharing, or fulfilling social obligations. Saying that consumption is for other people turns the whole subject on its head. Consumption is not a way of behaving that is added on after social patterns have been fixed. It is part of a way of life. When the Berlin Wall crumbled it was said to be falling before the East Germans' demand for Western consumer goods. It would be just as true to see their demand to live in a free society as the prime energizer for change, motor bikes, cosmetics and politics being just part of a package. This book offers a completely original way of thinking about consumption as a series of rituals. Consumption is making gestures for marking esteem, marking the calendar, marking identity, like the hall-marking of silver. Shopping is preparing for consumption rituals, or developing the infrastructure for them. The patterns of consumption show up the pattern of society. In a closed community spending is controlled by public scrutiny. We have consumerism because the frontiers of industrial democracy are open. We should watch the flow of goods if we want to understand what consumption is doing to the form of society.
Author: Irene Nemirovsky Publisher: Vintage ISBN: 0307949850 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 273
Book Description
In haunting ways, this gorgeous novel prefigures Irène Némirovsky’s masterpieceSuite Française. Set in France between 1910 and 1940 and first published in France in 1947, five years after the author’s death, All Our Worldly Goods is a gripping story of war, family life and star-crossed lovers. Pierre and Agnes marry for love against the wishes of his parents and his grandfather, the tyrannical family patriarch. Their marriage provokes a family feud that cascades down the generations. This brilliant novel is full of drama, heartbreak, and the telling observations that have made Némirovsky’s work so beloved and admired.
Author: Damon Schechter Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 047125682X Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 272
Book Description
We often think of great battles as having been won by superior strategy, bravery, or weaponry. Often, however, the greatest battles are decided by a much more mundane factor: logistics. Delivering the Goods looks at business logistics through the history of successful military logistical operations undertaken by leaders from Alexander the Great to General Norman Schwarzkopf, and offers practical guidance on applying proven logistical principles to your business.
Author: Timothy F. Bresnahan Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 0226074188 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 508
Book Description
New goods are at the heart of economic progress. The eleven essays in this volume include historical treatments of new goods and their diffusion; practical exercises in measurement addressed to recent and ongoing innovations; and real-world methods of devising quantitative adjustments for quality change. The lead article in Part I contains a striking analysis of the history of light over two millenia. Other essays in Part I develop new price indexes for automobiles back to 1906; trace the role of the air conditioner in the development of the American south; and treat the germ theory of disease as an economic innovation. In Part II essays measure the economic impact of more recent innovations, including anti-ulcer drugs, new breakfast cereals, and computers. Part III explores methods and defects in the treatment of quality change in the official price data of the United States, Canada, and Japan. This pathbreaking volume will interest anyone who studies economic growth, productivity, and the American standard of living.
Author: Mary Douglas
Author: Mary Douglas
Author: Ann Smart Martin
Author: John Brewer
Author: Lisa Jardine
Author: Mary Douglas
Author: Irene Nemirovsky
Author: 
Author: Damon Schechter
Author: Ellen Mitten
Author: Timothy F. Bresnahan