Consuming Cultures, Global Perspectives

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.

Author Biography

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).