Consumption and Consumerism in Early Modern England

Abstract

. Consumption studies have arguably transformed the study of early modern cultural history in the past three decades, with the championing of previously neglected sources, application of interdisciplinary approaches, and exploration of the mentalities of acquisition, ownership, and use. But does the accumulation of writing about consuming and consumption in this period amount to much more than the historical equivalent of window-shopping ? It is argued here that greater attention to the consumers as much as the consumed, to the motivations for consuming rather than the act of consumption alone, offers a way out of the explanatory cul-de-sac reached by over-indulgence in the early modern ' world of goods '.

Debating Production‐Consumption Linkages in Food Studies

“…12 Thus, Crewe (2000, p. 281) favourably comments that, emphasis added: "The importance of this approach is that it points to the possibility of "a more balanced treatment of the relationship between production and consumption" (Leslie and Reimer, 1999: 402)", one which also acknowledges the symbolic significance of commodities. Criticism of the approach has concentrated on its capacity to address non-commodified forms of consumption, Narotzky (1997) and Pennell (1999) for example, an issue more or less overlooked by my critics here. 13 Fine and Leopold (1993) deliberately opens with a discussion of the primarily US discipline of consumer studies which ranges over more or less every aspect of "Culture".…”

Taste À-la-mode: Consuming foreignness, picturing gender

“…They may serve to amuse an idle Lover; but I hate to be with a Woman when I can't be Company, as I do to be at a Feast when I lost my Stomach; and the rustling of a rich Gown or glitter of a thousand Jewels, are not half so prevailing to make me stay, as a white Neck and fresh Complexion ... 26 Courtine and Polidore's exchange is emblematic of what Sara Pennell has designated one of "the chief paradoxes within early modern consumerism" -that is, the centrality that 'consuming women' have played in the subsequent historiography of the consumer revolution, given the issues over their "access to power within consumption networks" such as patronage. 27 Identifying the relationship between women and material culture as essentially a process of objectification, the two male discussants remove what little agency the act of consumption allows, instead comparing woman's essential nature to that of the objects she consumes, thereby providing a vision of femininity that is inseparable from the objects with which she adorns herself. Accordingly, perhaps visual representations repeatedly adhered to the trope-like conjunction of female consumer and black pageboy because the processes of consumption similarly transformed the acquisitive woman into a culture object.…”

Sustainable Development as a Solution to Agricultural Competitiveness: The Case of Greece in the Era of European Integration

“…The remarkable increase in the consumption of red meat can be only read as a sign of social advancement. In the case of Greek society, as many food studies show, "commensalism -whether in the form of daily meals, life event celebrations and commemorations -involves multiple meanings of consumption: the partaking of food as a moral, as well as an oral and visual, event" (Pennell, 1999).…”