Consuming Behaviours: Identity, Politics and Pleasure in Twentieth-Century Britain - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0857856111 ISBN 13: 9780857856111

Publisher: Routledge, 2015

Synopsis

In twentieth-century Britain, consumerism increasingly defined and redefined individual and social identities. New types of consumers emerged: the idealized working-class consumer, the African consumer and the teenager challenged the prominent position of the middle and upper-class female shopper. Linking politics and pleasure, Consuming Behaviours explores how individual consumers and groups reacted to changes in marketing, government control, popular leisure and the availability of consumer goods.

From football to male fashion, tea to savings banks, leading scholars consider a wide range of products, ideas and services and how these were marketed to the British public through periods of imperial decline, economic instability, war, austerity and prosperity. The development of mass consumer society in Britain is examined in relation to the growing cultural hegemony and economic power of the United States, offering comparisons between British consumption patterns and those of other nations.

Bridging the divide between historical and cultural studies approaches, Consuming Behaviours discusses what makes British consumer culture distinctive, while acknowledging how these consumer identities are inextricably a product of both Britain's domestic history and its relationship with its Empire, with Europe and with the United States.

About this title

Book Description:

Offering a rich menu of topics from male fashion, to football, to tea, this new collection explores consumer culture in twentieth-century Britain.

From the Back Cover:

"A stimulating volume that reveals the dynamism of consumer identities and lifestyles in Britain and its Empire before Americanisation."--Frank Trentmann, editor of The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption"Consuming Behaviours presents cutting-edge research on consumption in twentieth century Britain.  In putting together these fine, well-researched essays, Rappaport, Dawson and Crowley complicate our understandings of what affluence meant to ordinary citizens and show just how important products and their uses were to people's identities and social lives." --Matthew Hilton, University of Birmingham, UK"This book is destined to become a key text for scholars and students alike.  Covering an amazing array of topics, it assembles a stellar selection of leading historians and above all, showcases conceptual rigor and an empirical range of histories of consumption."--Lawrence Black, University of York, UK

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0857856111
• ISBN 13: 9780857856111
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320
• Editor: Rappaport Erika, Trudgen Dawson Sandra, Crowley Mark J.