The World Of Consumption

Consumption has become one of the leading topics across the social sciences and vocational disciplines such as marketing and business studies. In this comprehensively updated and revised new edition, traditional approaches as well as the most recent literature are fully addressed and incorporated, with wide reference to theoretical and empirical work. Fine's refreshing and authoritative text includes a critical examination of such themes as: * economics imperialism and globalization * the world of commodities * systems of provision and culture * the consumer society * public consumption. This book presents an updated analysis of the cluttered landscape of studies of consumption that will make it required reading for students from a wide range of backgrounds including political economy, history and social science courses generally.

With growing affluence in the developed world, food has become an increasing focus for attention. Here, the authors argue that in order to understand the extensive and dramatic developments in the world of food, a new interdisciplinary approach is necessary. The Age of Affluence successfully addresses food consumption in this way. The volume: * argues the importance of socioeconomic and cultural factors over diet, in influencing the production, marketing and consumption of different groups of foods; * places food systems theory on sound analytical foundations; * draws critically upon food systems literature; * includes case studies from the sugar, dairy and meat systems; * employs novel statistical techniques to identify and explain distinct patterns of food consumption; The book will help to revitalize the discipline of food studies and points the way forward for the continuing study of food consumption. As such, it will be invaluable to students, researchers and policymakers engaged in the world of food.

The study of past society in terms of what it consumes rather than what it produces is - relatively speaking - a new development. The focus on consumption changes the whole emphasis and structure of historical enquiry. While human beings usually work within a single trade or industry as producers, as, say, farmers or industrial workers, as consumers they are active in many different markets or networks. And while history written from a production viewpoint has, by chance or design, largely been centred on the work of men, consumption history helps to restore women o the mainstream. The history of consumption demands a wide range of skills. It calls upon the methods and techniques of many other disciplines, including archaeology, sociology, social and economic history, anthropology and art criticism. But it is not simply a melting-pot of techniques and skills, brought to bear on a past epoch. Its objectives amount to a new description of a past culture in its totality, as perceived through its patterns of consumption in goods and services. Consumption and the World of Goods is the first of three volumes to examine history from this perspective, and is a unique collaboration between twenty-six leading subject specialists from Europe and North America. The outcome is a new interpretation of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, one that shapes a new historical landscape based on the consumption of goods and services.

Understanding consumption requires looking at the systems by which goods and services are provided – not just how they are produced but the historically evolved structures, power relations and cultures within which they are located. The Systems of Provision approach provides an interdisciplinary framework for unpacking these complex issues. This book provides a comprehensive account of the Systems of Provision approach, setting out core concepts and theoretical origins alongside numerous case studies. The book combines fresh understandings of everyday consumption using examples from food, housing, and water, with implications for society’s major challenges, including inequality, climate change, and prospects for capitalism. Readers do not require prior knowledge across the subject matter covered but the text remains significant for accomplished researchers and policymakers, especially those interested in the messy real world realities underpinning who gets what, how, and why across public and private provision in global, national, and historical contexts.

The world is poised on the threshold of economic changes that will reduce the income gap between the rich and poor on a global scale while reshaping patterns of consumption. Rapid economic growth in emerging-market economies is projected to enable consumers worldwide to spend proportionately less on food and more on transportation, goods, and services, which will in turn strain the global infrastructure and accelerate climate change. The largest gains will be made in poorer parts of the world, chiefly sub-Saharan Africa and India, followed by China and the advanced economies. In this new study, Tomas Hellebrandt and Paulo Mauro detail how this important moment in world history will unfold and serve as a warning to policymakers to prepare for the profound effects on the world economy and the planet.

Lady Alice Le Strange of Hunstanton in Norfolk kept a continuous series of household accounts from 1610-1654. Jane Whittle and Elizabeth Griffiths have used the Le Stranges' rich archive to reconstruct the material aspects of family life. This involves looking not only at purchases, but also at home production and gifts; and not only at the luxurious, but at the everyday consumption of food and medical care. Consumption is viewed not just as a set of objects owned, but as a process involving household management, acquisition and appropriation, a process that created and reinforced social links with craftsmen, servants, labourers, and the local community. It is argued that the county gentry provide a missing link in histories of consumption: connecting the fashions of London and the royal court, with those of middling strata of rural England. Recent writing has focused upon the transformation of consumption patterns in the eighteenth century. Here the earlier context is illuminated and, instead of tradition and stability, we find constant change and innovation. Issues of gender permeate the study. Consumption is often viewed as a female activity and the book looks in detail at who managed the provisioning, purchases, and work within the household, how spending on sons and daughters differed, and whether men and women attached different cultural values to household goods. This single household's economy provides a window into some of most significant cultural and economic issues of early modern England: innovations in trade, retail and production, the basis of gentry power, social relations in the countryside, and the gendering of family life.

This volume addresses how we can find happiness and well-being in the material world. It builds on previous works that find that materialism is associated with lowered well-being (materialists are less happy) and that consumerism, in all its profusion, is harmful to environmental well-being. How can we use the money and possessions in our lives in the service of well-being? Apparently not by being materialistic. Can we benefit from the many wonders of the marketplace -- in technology, convenience and aesthetics -- without falling prey to the lures and dangers of excessive material preoccupation? Can we meet our material needs in ways that nourish growth and well-being? The authors of the chapters in this volume are on-going researchers into such questions. Herein you can learn about the hedonic benefits of thrift and of spending on experiences; how possessions can be beneficial; how different types of consumers spend money; cultural variations in conceptions of the "good life;" how we might reconcile environmental and consumer well-being; and how to measure the whole of human, economic, and environmental well-being. Taken all together, this collection finds grounds for compatibility between what's good for the consumer and what's good for the environment. This volume appeals to academics, professionals, students and others interested in materialism and consumer well-being.

Consumption research is burgeoning across a wide range of disciplines. The Routledge Handbook on Consumption gathers experts from around the world to provide a nuanced overview of the latest scholarship in this expanding field. At once ambitious and timely, the volume provides an ideal map for those looking to position their work, find new analytic insights and identify research gaps. With an intuitive thematic structure and resolutely international outlook, it engages with theory and methodology; markets and businesses; policies, politics and the state; and culture and everyday life. It will be essential reading for students and scholars across the social and economic sciences.