Frank Trentmann

What we consume has become the defining feature of our lives: our economies live or die by spending, we are treated more as consumers than workers, and even public services are presented to us as products in a supermarket. In this monumental study, acclaimed historian Frank Trentmann unfolds the extraordinary history that has shaped our material world, from late Ming China, Renaissance Italy and the British empire to the present. Astonishingly wide-ranging and richly detailed, Empire of Things explores how we have come to live with so much more, how this changed the course of history, and the global challenges we face as a result.

How We Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First

Empire of Things

Alexander Nuetzenadel

Food has a special significance in the expanding field of global history. Food markets were the first to become globally integrated, linking distant cultures of the world, and in no other area have the interactions between global exchange and local cultural practices been as pronounced as in changing food cultures. In this wide-ranging and fascinating book, the authors provide an historical overview of the relationship between food and globalization in the modern world. Together, the chapters of this book provide a fresh perspective on both global history and food studies. As such, this book will be of interest to a wide range of students and scholars of history, food studies, sociology, anthropology and globalization.

Consumption, Markets and Politics in the Modern World

Food and Globalization

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.

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption

John Brewer

Fredrik Albritton Jonsson

Neil Fromer

Making scarcity -- Jean-Laurent Rosenthal: scarcity, language and politics -- Lyla Metha and Amber Huff: untangling scarcity -- Rick Wilk: rethinking the relationships between scarcity, poverty and hunger: an anthropological perspective -- Neil Fromer: renewable energy: a story of abundance and scarcity: a scientific -- Perspective -- The power of projection -- Fredrik Albritton Jonsson: growth in the anthropocene -- Dave Rutledge: the great resources myth -- Jirg Friedrichs: escapology, or how to escape Malthusian traps -- Coping, managing, innovating at different scales -- Hugh Rockoff: U.S. mobilization in World War II as a model for coping -- With climate change -- Walker Hanlon: scarcity and innovation: lessons from the British economy during the U.S. Civil War -- Sigrid Schmalzer: China's great leap famine: Malthus, Marx, Mao, and material scarcity -- Heather Chappells: encounters with scarcity at a micro-scale: householders responses to drought as a continuum of "normal" practice -- Dynamics of distribution -- Elizabeth Chatterjee: a climate of scarcity: electricity in India, 1899-2016 -- David Lamoureux: Lagos "scarce-city": investigating the roots of urban modernity in a colonial capital, 1900-1928 -- Hiroki Shin and Frank Trentmann: energy shortages and the politics of time: resilience, redistribution and "normality" in Japan and East Germany, 1940s-70s -- Emma Stephens: food shortages: the role and limitations of markets in resolving food crises during the 2012 famine in the Sahel

History, Politics, Society and Sustainability, 1800-2075

Scarcity in the Modern World

Elizabeth Shove

Richard Wilk

Has material civilization spun out of control, becoming too fast for our own well-being and that of the planet? This book confronts these anxieties and examines the changing rhythms and temporal organization of everyday life. How do people handle hurriedness, burn-out and stress? Are slower forms of consumption viable? This volume brings together international experts from geography, sociology, history, anthropology and philosophy. In case studies covering the United States, Asia, and Europe, contributors follow routines and rhythms, their emotional and political dynamics, and show how they are anchored in material culture and everyday practice. Running themes of the book are questions of coordination and disruption; cycles and seasons; and the interplay between power and freedom, and between material and natural forces. The result is a volume that brings studies of practice, temporality and material culture together to open up a new intellectual agenda.

Practice, Materiality and Culture

Time, Consumption and Everyday Life

Has material civilization spun out of control, becoming too fast for our own well-being and that of the planet? This book confronts these anxieties and examines the changing rhythms and temporal organization of everyday life. How do people handle hurriedness, burn-out and stress? Are slower forms of consumption viable? In case studies covering the United States, Asia and Europe, international experts follow routines and rhythms, their emotional and political dynamics and show how they are anchored in material culture and everyday practice. Running themes of the book are questions of coordination and disruption; cycles and seasons; and the interplay between power and freedom, and between material and natural forces. The result is a volume that brings studies of practice, temporality and material culture together to open up a new intellectual agenda.

"Civil Society" has been experiencing a global renaissance among social movements and political thinkers during the last two decades. This collection of original papers by junior and senior scholars offers an important comparative-historical dimension to the debate by examining the historical roots of civil society in Germany and Britain from the seventeenth-century revolutions to the beginning of the welfare state.

New Perspectives on Modern German and British History

Paradoxes of Civil Society

Konsum – der Motor unserer Zivilisation Was wir konsumieren, ist zu einem bestimmenden Aspekt des modernen Lebens geworden. Wir definieren uns über unseren Besitz, und der immer üppigere Lebensstil hat enorme Folgen für die Erde. Wie kam es dazu, dass wir heute mit einer derart großen Menge an Dingen leben, und wie hat das den Lauf der Geschichte verändert? Frank Trentmann, Historiker am Londoner Birkbeck College, erzählt in Herrschaft der Dinge erstmals umfassend die faszinierende Geschichte des Konsums. Von der italienischen Renaissance bis hin zur globalisierten Wirtschaft der Gegenwart entwirft er eine weltumspannende Alltags- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, die eine Fülle von Wissen bietet, den Blick aber ebenso auf die Herausforderungen der Zukunft lenkt angesichts von Überfluss und Turbokapitalismus. Ein opulentes, eindrucksvolles Werk, das Maßstäbe setzt, in der Forschung wie in den wichtigsten politischen und wirtschaftlichen Debatten unserer Zeit.

Die Geschichte des Konsums vom 15. Jahrhundert bis heute

Herrschaft der Dinge

Mark Bevir

Markets in Historical Contexts is the result of a dialogue between historians and social scientists thinking about markets in modern society. How should we approach markets after the collapse of Marxism? What alternative ways of thinking about markets can we recover from the past? The essays in this volume set out to challenge essentialist accounts of the market. Instead they suggest that markets are always embedded in distinctive traditions and practices that shape the ways in which they are conceived and the manner of their working. The essays range widely over European and non-European societies from the eighteenth century to the present, from the great transformation to globalization. Rational peasants, republican economists, popular conservatives, guild theorists, early environmentalists, communitarians, progressives, consumers, Gandhi's descendants and others are all revived. The volume thus recovers alternative ways of thinking about markets, many of which are neglected or marginalized in contemporary debates.

Ideas and Politics in the Modern World

Markets in Historical Contexts

This is the story of free trade in 19th century Britain, its contribution to the development of Britain's democratic culture, and the unravelling of the free trade movement in the wake of the First World War.

Frank Trentmann

About

Books

Join the club