Comments on: History 88 The Social History of Consumption, Spring 2008

By: jglenn

jglenn — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 14:22:00 +0000

Thanks for including “Taking Things Seriously” — it’s quite an honor to be included on this syllabus. I hope my friend Luc Sante’s book on cigarettes wasn’t bumped to make room for “Things,” though. Tell me if you’d like me to visit your class on the day you discuss the book — I applied early admission to Swarthmore (in 1986) and was rejected, so this would be a triumph of sorts for me.

By: late2theparty

late2theparty — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 14:56:39 +0000

Lucky me – I actually *did* get to take this course many years ago. I still love picking up the books nowadays, especially “Cigarettes are Sublime” (now off the syllabus – how could you??). Tim, thanks for keeping up this hugely intelligent blog – I am a big fan.

By: Daniel Rosenblatt

Daniel Rosenblatt — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 15:15:47 +0000

That’s an interesting sequence. I’ve in fact just added the Leach and the Strasser to my current Amazon shopping cart (we shall have to wait and see if they make the final cut–I’m not teaching this sort of thing this year or probably next, otherwise there would be no question–at this moment they would fall into the category of books I buy because I want to remember that they exist, which is itself an interesting form of consumption). When I DO teach this stuff it’s within the context of a course on the idea of “success” in American culture, so the Lears works really well because it sets the stage for looking at all sort of anti-modernist resistance to the pursuit of success, and I really want to make sure students get the idea that the resistance is just as culturally/historically structured as the societal ideal

On another matter entirely, I’m curious as to whether you’ve used the Brad Weiss before and how it has gone over. I’m not familiar with that book, but was thinking of using his “Making and Unmaking of the Haya Lived World” in an “intro for majors” that our department has. The issue is whether students find it readable. I ended up using _Nuer Dilemmas_ this time, but decided the Weiss might have been at about the same level of difficulty . (I also though about _Lifebuoy Men…_in this slot , which is essentially for an ethnography that (1) Isn’t about the Pacific, with some preference for Africa, and (2) addresses issues of historical change, colonial context, and possibly commodification. The main drawback is that in this context genre matters: I want a book that takes the world into account while still making a claim to be an ethnography of a particular local non-western place.)

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 04:13:08 +0000

Yeah. That’s a good piece, and actually a good anthology too. But it’s a view that I get covered pretty thoroughly through the Leach, Abelson, Heinze, Strasser, Nussbaum sequence–it’s one of those cases where I pretty much have to decide between one of those and Lears. Since each of those also covers some particular angle (shopping, spectacle, public space & consumption, shoplifting, immigrant experience, Christmas and childhood), Lears ends up just outside the syllabus. He tends to be one of the authors I most commend to many of the students if their commodity history papers deal with relevant time periods/theoretical frameworks.

By: Daniel Rosenblatt

Daniel Rosenblatt — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 03:12:15 +0000

What I’ve usually used of Jackson’s work is “From Salvation to Self Realization: Advertising and the Therapeutic Roots of Consumer Culture article from the (Fox & Lears) _Culture of Consumption_ book–it does a nice job of showing not only how consumer goods came to satisfy certain needs, but the way a whole new set of needs emerged with changes in the nature of urban middle class life & work.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 12:39:14 +0000

I’m still debating where to put some of Grant’s writings, but I intend to use his work.

I’ve used Jackson’s work, usually Fables of Abundance, in most iterations of this class, but for whatever reason, the discussion just goes nowhere. I think maybe it’s because the students experience Fables as a reprise of Land of Desire.

I’ve also used Miller every other time I’ve taught the course, but something of the same problem. The major Trinidad book is very difficult for students for some reason. What I might do is assign Miller’s Material World blog in the Things and Meaning class.

By: Daniel Rosenblatt

Daniel Rosenblatt — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 12:04:19 +0000

I want to take that course too–though I am surprised to see no Grant McCracken and even more surprised to see no Jackson Lears or Danny Miller, since those are probably the places I would start were I to try to teach a course on consumption. Which is not meant as criticism, but simply a thought along the lines of “I wonder what sort of perspective is driving this course” and “amazing that there is so much else out there besides the stuff I am familiar with.”

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 18:05:08 +0000

I was toying with appending the Wal-Mart scholarship that’s coming out to the discussion of Cohen’s book–but in a funny kind of way, I tend to think the real story with Wal-Mart is on the other end (labor and supply) than with consumption.

(I snuck one chapter of my book in, so soap is there, a bit.)

Sherman, Jacobson is on my “to do” list, but I hadn’t had time to read it this semester so I didn’t put it on for this round. Nightingale is a nice suggestion that I might choose to do instead for the first advertising discussion. I always feel bad about advertising/marketing in this course–the literature is interesting and compelling, but I end up squeezing it out to showcase commodity history and the three major narrative “arcs” I cover in the first half.

By: Sisyphus

Sisyphus — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 16:48:34 +0000

Interesting course — but there’s no books on soap!

DId you follow that discussion on The Valve about … uh, I think it’s Robbins’ article on “commodity histories”? There was a big debate it might be interesting to look into.

And I haven’t read it yet, but I’m interested in _Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Luster_, which might be interesting to add. Or I might add one of the wal-mart books that’s coming out, considering it’s the single largest employer in the US right now.

By: Sdorn

Sdorn — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 14:33:32 +0000

Great list of readings. I hadn’t known of Peiss’s Hope in a Jar — thanks! Have you come across Lisa Jacobson’s Raising Consumers (2004), or the parts of Carl Nightingale’s On the Edge (1994) that discusses the 1980s/90s marketing strategies of athletic shoe manufacturers?