Melissa Calaresu

Danielle van den Heuvel

Street vendors are ubiquitous across the world and throughout history. They are part of almost any distribution chain, and play an important role in the marketing of consumer goods particularly to poorer customers. Focusing on the food trades, this multi-disciplinary volume explores the dynamics of street selling and its impact on society. Through an investigation of food hawking, the volume both showcases the latest results from a subject that has seen the emergence of a significant body of innovative and adventurous scholarship, and advances the understanding of street vending and its impact on society by stimulating interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary discussions. Covering a time span of approximately two millennia, from antiquity to the present, the book includes chapters on Europe and Asia, and covers a diverse range of themes such as the identity of food sellers (in terms of gender, ethnicity, and social status); the role of the street seller in the distribution of food; the marketing of food; food traders and the establishment; the representation of food hawkers; and street traders and economic development. By taking a dynamic approach, the collection has enabled its contributors to cross disciplinary boundaries and engage in discussions which extend beyond the limits of their own academic fields, and thus provide a fresh appreciation of this ancient phenomenon.

Selling in the Streets from Antiquity to the Present

Food Hawkers

Joan Pau Rubiés

Filippo de Vivo

Melissa Calaresu is the McKendrick Lecturer in History at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge, UK. Filippo de Vivo is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. Joan-Pau Rubies is Reader in International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK.

Essays in Honour of Peter Burke

Exploring Cultural History

Joan-Pau Rubies

Over the past 30 years, cultural history has moved from the periphery to the centre of historical studies, profoundly influencing the way we look at and analyze all aspects of the past. In this volume, a distinguished group of international historians has come together to consider the rise of cultural history in general, and to highlight the particular role played in this rise by Peter Burke, the first professor of Cultural History at the University of Cambridge and one of the most prolific and influential authors in the field. Reflecting the many and varied interests of Peter Burke, the essays in this volume cover a broad range of topics, geographies and chronologies. Grouped into four sections, 'Historical Anthropology', 'Politics and Communication', 'Images' and 'Cultural Encounters', the collection explores the boundaries and possibilities of cultural history; each essay presenting an opportunity to engage with the wider issues of the methods and problems of cultural history, and with Peter Burke's contributions to each chosen theme. Taken as a whole the collection shows how cultural history has enriched the ways in which we understand the traditional fields of political, economic, literary and military history, and permeates much of what we now understand as social history. It also demonstrates how cultural history is now at the heart of the coming together of traditional disciplines, providing a meeting ground for a variety of interests and methodologies. Offering a wide international perspective, this volume complements another Ashgate publication, Popular Culture in Early Modern England, which focuses on Peter Burke's influence on the study of popular culture in English history.

Melissa Calaresu

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