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The World of Goods
Mary Douglas,Baron Isherwood +1 more
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TLDR
The World of Goods as mentioned in this paper is a classic of economic anthropology whose insights remain compelling and urgent, arguing that poverty is caused as much by the erosion of local communities and networks as it is by lack of possessions and contrast small-scale with large-scale consumption in the household.Abstract:
It is well-understood that the consumption of goods plays an important, symbolic role in the way human beings communicate, create identity, and establish relationships. What is less well-known is that the pattern of their flow shapes society in fundamental ways. In this book the renowned anthropologist Mary Douglas and economist Baron Isherwood overturn arguments about consumption that rely on received economic and psychological explanations. They ask new questions about why people save, why they spend, what they buy, and why they sometimes-but not always-make fine distinctions about quality.
Instead of regarding consumption as a private means of satisfying one’s preferences, they show how goods are a vital information system, used by human beings to fulfill their intentions towards one another. They also consider the implications of the social role of goods for a new vision for social policy, arguing that poverty is caused as much by the erosion of local communities and networks as it is by lack of possessions, and contrast small-scale with large-scale consumption in the household.
A radical rethinking of consumerism, inequality and social capital, The World of Goods is a classic of economic anthropology whose insights remain compelling and urgent.
This Routledge Classics edition includes a new foreword by Richard Wilk.
"Forget that commodities are good for eating, clothing, and shelter; forget their usefulness and try instead the idea that commodities are good for thinking." – Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwoodread more
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Journal ArticleDOI
Time, Money, and Labor History's Encounter with Consumer Culture
TL;DR: The conventional concerns of labor historians with economic power relations and the rational articulation of workers' material and psychological interests seem to be threatened by issues that point beyond the workplace as mentioned in this paper.
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Ethical Consumption, Consumer Self-Governance, and the Later Foucault
TL;DR: In this article, the later work of Michel Foucault on ethics, freedom, and self-governance applies to the ethics of consumption and to new ethical consumerist movements such as fair-trade coffee.
Journal ArticleDOI
Consumer behavior in colonial charlestown, Massachusetts, 1630–1760
TL;DR: In this paper, consumer behavior of the Massachusetts Bay seaport of Charlestown from 1630 to 1760 is examined, showing that the material lives of consumers were structured by shifting cultural values which included an emphasis on the family as primary social unit as well as a value placed on the emerging new role of the individual.
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Modern Discipline: Its historical context in the colonial Chesapeake
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the development of Western society's modern way of life and demonstrate how consumerism and its behavioral correlates actively shaped and created behavior in an industrializing society.
Understanding energy consumption: Beyond technology and economics
H. Wilhite,E. Shove +1 more
TL;DR: The Geneva Group as mentioned in this paper, a cross-disciplinary group of senior researchers to bring social and cultural perspectives to modeling of household energy consumption, was based on an acknowledgement of the failure of technical and economic models to explain consumption or more importantly, how consumption patterns change.