The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective Ess

The kindle of Things Gender and Consumption in Historical PerspectiveThe Sex of Things is a collection of thirteen essays discussing the social history of consumption (loosely defined) and gender in France, England, Germany, Italy, and the United States from the eighteenth to the late twentieth century. Taking a in general historical approach to the topic of gender and consumption, the contributors come from various academic disciplines history, economics, area studies, English, art history, and gender studies. The contributors contextualize their analyses of gender and consumption historically in optic representations and popular social and political lines of thought. In the introduction, de Grazia lays the groundwork for why we should be concerned with how gender impacts the subject of consumption. Simplistic notions of naturally or inevitably identifying the egg-producing(prenominal) sex with shopping sprees are challenged in favor of a deeper inquiry into the assumptions rev olving around AMr. Breadwinner and AMrs. Consumer(3). Instead of merely debating whether consumption is liberating or oppressive, these essays are concerned with the study of consumption in terms of the construction of gender roles, class relations, the family, and the state.Essays in the first section relate to the transition of consumption patterns from aristocratic to bourgeois society. De Grazia locates the produce of bourgeois consumption practices in the Afeminized world of the home, where female heads of household not precisely were expected to be nurturing and sociable, but were also consumers of food, clothing, and furniture. Through their purchases, these women roll up (for themselves and their children) what Pierre Bourdieu called Acultural capital, b... ...en women and melodrama by consideration of statistical data on the female audience, as well as discursive contributions from popular media. The Sex of Things concludes with selected bibliography by Ellen Furlough, high spot gender and consumption in historical perspective. The bibliography includes histories of consumption and consumer culture as well as theoretical contributions and contains a number of categories rooted in libber research on consumption. These categories include sites of consumption, marketing and design , spectatorship and reception, production of representations, domesticity, sexuality, appearance, and politics and ideologies of consumption. Each section ranges historically from the Middle Ages to the present. Unfortunately, the bibliography is dominated by Western perspectives only a few of the sources are non-Western in orientation.