The article addresses debates around the changing nature of old age, using U.K. data on spending on dress and related aspects of appearance by older women to explore the potential role of consumption in the reconstitution of aged identities. Based on pseudo-cohort analysis of Family Expenditures Survey, it compares spending patterns on clothing, cosmetics and hairdressing, 1961-2011. It concludes that there is little evidence for the 'baby boomers' as a strategic or distinctive generation. There is evidence, however, for increased engagement by older women in aspects of appearance: shopping for clothes more frequently; more involved in the purchase of cosmetics; and women over 75 are now the most frequent attenders at hairdressers. The roots of these patterns, however, lie more in period than cohort effects, and in the role of producer-led developments such as mass cheap fashion and the development of anti-ageing products.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to model the relationships between women's outerwear consumption, frequency of purchase and consumer profiles, and to analyse historical changes in particular, using repeated cross‐sectional data on household expenditure.Design/methodology/approachA sample of over 20,000 female spenders, aged between 16 and 54 were extracted from UK Family Expenditure Survey (FES). Tobit model, “two‐part” model and pseudo‐panel model were used to estimate consumer demand for women's outerwear, taking infrequency of purchase into account.FindingsThe importance of “fashion” in clothing consumption has risen by two‐fold since the 1960s, measured by purchase probability. Clothing have transformed from durable goods to consumables. Youth, class and women's employment are found to be significantly related to fashion consumption, controlling for the rise in income.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings are limited to UK female consumers and to the demographic data that are available from FES. The effects of occasions, serendipity, emotions and weather remain to be assessed in future research.Originality/valueThis paper provides a unique measurement of “fashion” for a comparative social science research across time and space. It promotes the usefulness of the perspective of fashion as a powerful critique against the rationality assumption of neoclassical economics with complementary evidence.

This paper critically examines Inglehart's argument that there is a predictable shift from materialist to post-materialist values, using the British case as our focus. Using the 1981, 1990 and 1999 data for the British part of World Values Surveys, we criticize the distinction between materialist and post-materialist values. Using multiple correspondence analysis, we visualize how different attitudes are related to each other by portraying them in a multiple-dimensional space. We show that the organization of cultural values is complex, and is not easily summarized by the materialist/post-materialist dichotomy.We prefer to recognize the more politically loaded nature of attitudes by distinguishing between libertarian and authoritarian values, and between conformist and rebellious citizens. We show that there is little evidence of major change between 1981 and 1999, and indeed Britons, and especially young people, are moving slightly away from post-materialism, becoming increasingly rebellious and conscientious.

This article analyzes how Japan financed its World War II occupation of Southeast Asia, the market-purchased transfer of resources to Japan, and the monetary and inflation consequences of Japanese policies. Occupation was financed principally by printing large quantities of money. While some Southeast Asian countries had high inflation, hyperinflation hardly occurred because of a sustained transactions demand for money and because of Japan's strong enforcement of monetary monopoly. Highly specialized Southeast Asian economies and loss of Japanese merchant shipping limited resource extraction.

This article introduces the symposium issue on `Narrative, Numbers and Socio-Cultural Change'.The articles were all papers presented initially at the conference `Narrative, Numbers and Social Change' at the University of Manchester, UK in November 2007.The conference was organized through the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC). Methodological issues have been central to CRESC since its inception, and the Centre has an ongoing commitment to nurturing methodological expertise and innovation in the study of socio-cultural change. This particular event marked an interest in rethinking the boundaries of qualitative and quantitative research and in developing methods adequate to the challenges posed by socio-cultural complexity, in ways which involve reworking some of the conventional understandings of the relationships between the empirical, the theoretical and methodology. The introduction reviews the articles and reflects on their significance in the context of understandings of methods in cultural sociology and the sociology of culture, in the UK and beyond.