Globalization and consumerism are two of the buzzwords of the early twenty-first century. In Consuming Cultures, renowned scholars explore the links between modernity and consumption. The book fills a gap in contemporary thinking on the subject by approaching it from a truly global point-of-view. It draws on case studies from around the world, with Africa, Asia and Central America featuring as prominently as Western countries. A transnational perspective allows the authors to investigate the diversity of consumer cultures and the interaction between them. The authors look at the genealogy of the modern consumer and the development of consumer cultures, from the porcelain trade and consumption in Britain and China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to post Second World War developments in America and Japan, and the contemporary consumer politics of cosmopolitan citizenship. Challenging and pioneering, Consuming Cultures problematizes popular accounts of globalization and consumerism, decentring the West and concentrating on putting history back into these accounts.

About the editors

John Brewer is Professor of History and Literature at the California Institute of Technology. His book The Pleasure of Imagination: English Culture in the 18th Century (HarperCollins, 1997) won the Wolfson History Prize.

Frank Trentmann is Professor of Modern History at Birkbeck College, London, and Director of the Cultures of Consumption Research Programme (ESRC-AHRC).

Contents

1. The Modern Evolution of the Consumer: Meanings, Knowledge, and Identities Before the Age of Affluence
Frank Trentmann, Birkbeck College

2. Brand Management and the Productivity of Consumption
Adam Arvidsson, University of Copenhagen

3. On the Movement of Porcelains: Rethinking the Birth of the Consumer Society as Interactions of Exchange Networks, China and Britain, 1600-1750
Robert Batchelor, Georgia Southern University

4. Consumer Culture and Extractive Industry on the Margins of the World System
Richard Wilk, Indiana University

5. 'Flowers of Paradise' or 'Polluting of the Nation'? Contested Narratives of Khat Consumption
David Anderson and Neil Carrier, Oxford University

6. Chewing Gum: American Taste and the 'Shadowlands' of the Yukatan
Michael Redclift, Kings College London

7. Japan's Post-war 'Consumer Revolution,' or Striking a 'Balance' between Consumption and Saving
Sheldon Garon, Princeton University

8. Trust, Food and Contestation: From the Buying Nothing Day to Fair Trade Goods
Roberta Sassatelli, University of East Anglia and University of Bologna

9. Renegotiating the Social Contract in Post-War Europe: The American Marshall Plan and Consumer Democracy
Sheryl Kroen, University of Florida

10. Emerging Global Water Welfarism: Access to Water, Unruly Consumers and Transnational Governance
Bronwen Morgan, University of Bristol