Consumption and the World of Goods

651 Pages·1994·18.038 MB·English

by  John Brewer (editor), Roy Porter (editor)

Consumption and the
World of Goods

Consumption and the
World of Goods
Edited by
John Brewer and Roy Porter
I~ ~~~~~~n~~:up
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published in 1993 by Routledge
First published in paperback in 1994
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
Transferred to Digital Printing 2005
This coUection © 1993, 1994 Routledge; individual
chapters © 1993, 1994 individual contributors
Typeset in Baskerville No.2 by Florencetype Ltd,
Kewstoke, Avon
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
also available
ISBN 0-415-11478-0
Contents
LIST OF FIGURES ix
LIST OF TABLES xi
LIST OF PLATES xiii
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xvii
PREFACE
XXI
I Introduction
John Brewer and Roy Porter
Part I Problems, methods and concepts
2 Coming up for air: consumer culture in historical perspective 19
Jean-Christophe Agnew
3 Understanding traditional and modern patterns of consumption in eighteenth-
century England: a character-action approach 40
Colin Campbell
4 Consumption: disease of the consumer society? 58
Roy Porter
Part II Goods and consumption
5 Between purchasing power and the world of goods: understanding the household
economy in early modern Europe 85
Jan de Vries
v
VI Contents
6 European consumption and Asian production in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries 133
John E. Wills, Jr
7 Res et verba: conspicuous consumption in the early modern world 148
Peter Burke
8 Consumption in early modern social thought 162
Joyce Appleby
Part III Production and the meaning of possessions
9 Changes in English and Anglo-American consumption from 1550 to 1800 177
Carole Shammas
10 The meaning of consumer behaviour in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-
century England 206
Lorna Weatherill
11 The production and marketing of populuxe goods in eighteenth-century Paris 228
Cissie Fairchilds
12 The meanings of things: interpreting the consumer economy in the eighteenth
century 249
T. H. Breen
13 The changing roles of food in the study of consumption 261
Sidney W Mint;:;
14 Women and the world of goods: a Lancashire consumer and her possessions,
1751-81 274
Amanda Vickery
Part IV Literacy and numeracy
15 Literacy in context: meaning and measurement in early modern England 305
David Cressy
16 Reckoning with commerce: numeracy in eighteenth-century America 320
Patricia Cline Cohen
17 Teaching in the market-place, or 'Caesar adsum jam forte: Pompey aderat': the
retailing of knowledge in provincial England during the eighteenth century 335
John Money
Part V The consumption of culture: books and newspapers
18 The book trade in eastern Europe in the seventeenth and early eighteenth
centuries 381
laroslav lsaievych
Contents vii
19 Selling it to the provinces: news and commerce round eighteenth-century
Salisbury 393
C. Y. Ferdinand
20 The business of political enlightenment in France, 1770-1800 412
Jeremy D. Popkin
Part VI Consumption, objects and images
21 Reading and writing with nature: a materialist approach to French formal gardens 439
Chandra Mukerji
22 Presuming images and consuming words: the visualization of knowledge from the
Enlightenment to post-modernism 462
Barbara Maria Stafford
23 Perishable commodities: Dutch still-life paintings and the 'empire of things' 478
Simon Schama
24 The consuming flame: electrical showmen and Tory mystics in the world of goods 489
Simon Schaffer
25 Manufacturing, consumption and design in eighteenth-century England 527
John Styles
INDEX 555

Figures
5.1a Indices of agricultural and industrial prices 1660-1820 88
5.1b Terms of trade between agriculture and industry 1660-1820 88
5.2 Changes in the equivalent of the wage rate of a building craftsman
expressed in a composite physical unit of consumables in southern
England 1264--1954 90
5.3 Real wages of construction labour in southern England and the western
Netherlands 1480-1820 92
5.4 Adult male average full-time earnings for selected groups of workers,
1755-1851, at constant prices 94
5.5 Z goods model 109
5.6 The backward-bending supply curve III
9.1 Possible relationships between wealth and value of consumer goods 196
IX