Trentmann, Frank

The making of the consumer.

Knowledge, power and identity in the modern world.

Oxford

2006

184520249X

55098

Ranging from the United States to contemporary Papua New Guinea, and from the European Union to China, this book discusses the evolution of the consumer in economics, law, and anthropology; the political contestation of water and tea, as well as shopping in modern Europe, and the current refashioning of consumer identities in East Germany, in multinational stores in China, and in public debates about the effect of consumerism on childhood and citizenship in Europe and North America. Bringing together international experts from history, law, economics, anthropology, and media studies, this book offers a historically informed perspective on the rise of the consumer to its current prominence.

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

List of Contributors

1 Knowing Consumers - Histories, Identities, Practices: An Introduction

Frank Trentmann

Part I Defining Consumers: Consumers in Economics, Law and Civil Society

2 The Problematic Status of the Consumer in Orthodox Economic Thought

Donald Winch

3 From Users to Consumers: Water Politics in Nineteenth-Century London

Frank Trentmann and Vanessa Taylor

4 Women and the Ethics of Consumption in France at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: The Ligue Sociale d`Acheteurs

Marie-Emmanuelle Chessel

5 Legal Constructions of the Consumer

Michelle Everson

Part II: Commercial Relations: Retailers, Experts and the Contested Consumer

6 Packaging China: Foreign Articles and Dangerous Tastes in the Mid- Victorian Tea Party

Erika Rappaport

7 From neighbour to Consumer: The Transformation of Retailer-
Consumer Relationship in Twentieth-Century Germany

Uwe Spiekermann

8 Consumers with Chines Characteristics? Local Customers in British
and Japanese Multinational Stores in Contemporary China

Jos Gamble

9 A Becoming Subject: Consumer Socialzation in the Mediated Marketplace

Stephen Kline

Part III Reframing Consumers and Consumption: Contemporary Culture and Political Economy

10 Competing Domains: Democratic Subjects and Consuming Subjects in Britain and the United States since 1945

Frank Mort

11 From Stigma to Cult: Changing Meanings in East German Consumer Culture

Ina Merkel

12 The Limits of Culture: Political Economy and the Anthropology of Consumption

James G. Carrier

13 Addressing the Consumer

Ben Fine

Index

↑ http://www.gbv.de/dms/bsz/toc/bsz252980204inh.pdf