Author: Roland Snow VailePublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Consumption (Economics)
Languages : en
Pages : 102
Book Description
Research Memorandum on Social Aspects of Consumption in the Depression
Author: Roland Snow VailePublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Consumption (Economics)
Languages : en
Pages : 102
Book Description
An All-Consuming Century
Author: Gary CrossPublisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231502532
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 333
Book Description
The unqualified victory of consumerism in America was not a foregone conclusion. The United States has traditionally been the home of the most aggressive and often thoughtful criticism of consumption, including Puritanism, Prohibition, the simplicity movement, the '60s hippies, and the consumer rights movement. But at the dawn of the twenty-first century, not only has American consumerism triumphed, there isn't even an "ism" left to challenge it. An All-Consuming Century is a rich history of how market goods came to dominate American life over that remarkable hundred years between 1900 and 2000 and why for the first time in history there are no practical limits to consumerism. By 1930 a distinct consumer society had emerged in the United States in which the taste, speed, control, and comfort of goods offered new meanings of freedom, thus laying the groundwork for a full-scale ideology of consumer's democracy after World War II. From the introduction of Henry Ford's Model T ("so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one") and the innovations in selling that arrived with the department store (window displays, self service, the installment plan) to the development of new arenas for spending (amusement parks, penny arcades, baseball parks, and dance halls), Americans embraced the new culture of commercialism—with reservations. However, Gary Cross shows that even the Depression, the counterculture of the 1960s, and the inflation of the 1970s made Americans more materialistic, opening new channels of desire and offering opportunities for more innovative and aggressive marketing. The conservative upsurge of the 1980s and '90s indulged in its own brand of self-aggrandizement by promoting unrestricted markets. The consumerism of today, thriving and largely unchecked, no longer brings families and communities together; instead, it increasingly divides and isolates Americans. Consumer culture has provided affluent societies with peaceful alternatives to tribalism and class war, Cross writes, and it has fueled extraordinary economic growth. The challenge for the future is to find ways to revive the still valid portion of the culture of constraint and control the overpowering success of the all-consuming twentieth century.
Agricultural Economics Literature
Author: Agricultural Economics Literature
Author: United States. Bureau of Agricultural Economics. LibraryPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agriculture
Languages : en
Pages : 724
Book Description
New York Jews and the Great Depression
Author: Beth S. WengerPublisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300062656
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300
Book Description
Challenging the standard narrative of American Jewish upward mobility, Wenger shows that Jews of the era not only worried about financial stability and their security as a minority group but also questioned the usefulness of their educational endeavors and the ability of their communal institutions to survive.
Notes - Municipal Reference and Research Center
Author: Municipal Reference and Research Center (New York, N.Y.)Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cities and towns
Languages : en
Pages : 766
Book Description
New York Jews and Great Depression
Author: Beth S. WengerPublisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815606178
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
Chronicling the experience of New York City's Jewish families during the Great Depression, this work tells the story of a generation of immigrants and their children as they faced an uncertain future in America.
Publications
Author: University of Wisconsin--Madison. Agricultural Experiment StationPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Entomology
Languages : en
Pages : 798
Book Description
Criminology
Author: Donald Reed TaftPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 744
Book Description
The March of Spare Time
Author: Susan CurrellPublisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 081220171X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244
Book Description
In The March of Spare Time, Susan Currell explores how and why leisure became an object of such intense interest, concern, and surveillance during the Great Depression. As Americans experienced record high levels of unemployment, leisure was thought by reformers, policy makers, social scientists, physicians, labor unions, and even artists to be both a cause of and a solution to society's most entrenched ills. Of all the problems that faced America in the 1930s, only leisure seemed to offer a panacea for the rest. The problem centered on divided opinions over what constituted proper versus improper use of leisure time. On the one hand, sociologists and reformers excoriated as improper such leisure activities as gambling, loafing, and drinking. On the other, the Works Progress Administration and the newly professionalized recreation experts promoted proper leisure activities such as reading, sports, and arts and crafts. Such attention gave rise to new ideas about how Americans should spend their free time to better themselves and their nation. These ideas were propagated in social science publications and proliferated into the wider cultural sphere. Films, fiction, and radio also engaged with new ideas about leisure, more extensively than has previously been recognized. In examining this wide spectrum of opinion, Currell offers the first full-scale account of the fears and hopes surrounding leisure in the 1930s, one that will be an important addition to the cultural history of the period.