American Dreams in Mississippi: Consumers, Poverty, and Culture, 1830-1998 - Softcover

Ownby, Ted

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807848069 ISBN 13: 9780807848067

Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999

Synopsis

The dreams of abundance, choice, and novelty that have fueled the growth of consumer culture in the United States would seem to have little place in the history of Mississippi--a state long associated with poverty, inequality, and rural life. But as Ted Ownby demonstrates in this innovative study, consumer goods and shopping have played important roles in the development of class, race, and gender relations in Mississippi from the antebellum era to the present.

After examining the general and plantation stores of the nineteenth century, a period when shopping habits were stratified according to racial and class hierarchies, Ownby traces the development of new types of stores and buying patterns in the twentieth century, when women and African Americans began to wield new forms of economic power. Using sources as diverse as store ledgers, blues lyrics, and the writings of William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, and Will Percy, he illuminates the changing relationships among race, rural life, and consumer goods and, in the process, offers a new way to understand the connection between power and culture in the American South.

About this title

Book Description

"A major contribution to the growing historiography of American consumerism. . . . An important work that should serve as a model for similar studies."-- Journal of American History

From the Inside Flap

Shows how consumer goods and shopping have played important roles in the development of class, race, and gender relations in Mississippi from the antebellum era to the present?or from the plantation store to Wal-Mart.

About this edition

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0807848069
• ISBN 13: 9780807848067
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 248