For the last three decades
historians from a variety of backgrounds of expertise have begun to take a
scholarly interest in the history of consumption, being part of a wider
academic trend that has seen the interpretive focus shift from the producer to
the consumer.[1]This
shift has been deemed quite necessary by many historians, who regard
consumption as an important category of historical analysis. In an article in
1993, Appleby referred to consumption as ‘the linchpin of our modern social
system’ and noted her bemusement that the topic had been overlooked by
historians until the early 1980s.[2]
The frameworks and approaches to the topic have altered significantly over
time, for instance the initial socio-economic framework and quantitative
analysis of consumption studies that was established in the early 1980s has now
been joined if not surpassed by studies that take more interest in literary
sources and their cultural consequences.[3]The
definition for consumption has evolved over time, for instance the definition
Appleby gave consumption: ‘the desiring, acquiring and enjoying of goods and
services one has purchased’ is specifically centred on the exchange of commodities.[4]Brewer
and Trentmann broadened this definition in 2006, allowing it to move beyond a
focus on commodities: ‘All sorts of consumption take place outside the presumed
model of shopping. Having a shower is consumption, as is eating out with friends,
but it would be simplistic to reduce such practices and experiences to one of
money changing hands. ’[5]
The latter ‘definition’ indicates the conceptual ambiguity of the topic and
will form the basis of the following discussion.
There have been clear concerns
expressed for a number of years that the attempts to interpret the past with
approaches based on consumption have been Eurocentric in their focus and have
led to Eurocentric conclusions. Brewer and Porter are quick to acknowledge
their concern in their book Consuming
Cultures, Global Perspectives noting that most of the work done on
consumption ‘has been governed by a story of modernity firmly located in the
West.’[6]
Roberts defines Eurocentricism as:
‘...‘putting Europe at the centre
of things’, and its usual implication is that to do so is wrong. But, of
course, if we are merely talking about facts, about what happened, and not
about the value that we place on them, then it is quite correct to put Europe
at the centre of the story in modern times.’[7]
Despite the obvious sneer, Roberts
does some to have a solid grasp on the nature of Eurocentric debates, which is
that they revolve around criticisms of assumed European superiority or on
debates regarding the search for truth. It is important to qualify that Blaut’s
understanding of the idea of Europe is not something that is determined by
geography because he sees ‘Greater Europe’ as including nations such as the
United States and Canada where the majority of its citizens are of European
descent.[8]On
occasions this discussion will refer to what the majority of historians refer
to as the ‘West’, which is in essence a synonym for Blaut’s ‘Greater Europe’
term. This discussion will track the historiography of consumption studies,
utilising the many historical works and scholarly opinions on the matter, in
order to assess whether the discipline can avoid using analytical frameworks or
forming conclusions that are centred on European thinking and understanding.
Before consumption became a
category of historical analysis in the early 1980s, the contemporary consumer
society was assumed to have originated from the mass consumption that emerged
in North America and Western Europe around the year 1900.[9]
However in 1982 McKendrick, Plumb and Brewer questioned this assumption and
showed that in fact there were elements of a consumer society that pre-dated
this period. McKendrick made the claim that ‘...no one in the future should
doubt that the first of the world’s consumer societies had unmistakably emerged
by 1800.’[10] Here,
McKendrick was referring to the ‘consumer revolution’ that occurred in England
during the eighteenth-century, when the majority of people within English
society began to have the desire and ability to purchase commodities which had
previously only been available to a richer minority.[11]
McKendrick also noted that this ‘consumer revolution...was the necessary
analogue to the industrial revolution, the necessary convulsion on the demand
side of the equation to match the convulsion on the supply side.’[12]
Rather than putting increased
consumption as the result of increased production, McKendrick reserves the
premise and shows that in fact it is the wider social demand that results in
higher product outputs. He puts this increased demand down to a number of prior
social and commercial reasons, such as that there was plenty of social mobility
which enabled increased expenditure by a greater number of people and the fact
that traders and shopkeepers were now more capable and more numerous to sell
their consumer goods.[13]
McKendrick used accounts from people who witnessed this phenomenon to show that
England had become a land of plenty that the majority of people benefitted from.[14]
McKendrick also points to the life of Josiah Wedgewood who he presents as one
of the many merchandising pioneers who was able to increase the desire for more
consumer goods amongst the English people and who laid down a precedent for commercialisation
that would become a feature of the rest of the world.[15]
In short, McKendrick put England at the centre of the history of consumption
and established a narrative and a framework for the emergence of a consumer
society.
Since The
Birth of a Consumer Society several historians have built on this idea on a
‘consumer revolution’ in the early modern period, which essentially involves
the spreading of shops, the establishing of innovative credit arrangements and
the expansion of advertising and promotional material.[16]
Other historians have attempted to actually push the origin of this narrative
further back in European history.[17]
The claims made by these historians vary in their assertiveness, for instance
the assertions made about the origins of consumerism in Renaissance Italy.
While Goldthwaite suggests that there were the ‘stirrings’[18]
of a consumer society during this period Jardine expresses theory in a much
more confident manner:
‘The
world we inhabit today, with its ruthless competitiveness, fierce consumerism,
restless desire for ever wider horizons, for travel discovery and innovation, a
world hemmed in by the small-mindedness of petty nationalism and religious
bigotry but refusing to bow to it, is a world which was made in the
Renaissance.’[19]
This framework of a ‘consumer
revolution’ is used by these historians to fit into a wider narrative of the
progress of modernity, with scholars like Quataert asserting that one of the
characteristics of modernity is the ‘ascendancy of the consumer over the
producer.’[20]Anderson
and Carrier note that this mode of thought applies to the majority of the academic
work done on consumption: ‘The study of consumption in the West has been
dominated by a narrative of modernity. Consumption, the consumer and consumer
cultures are usually seen to be a product of the progressive development of
capitalist society.’[21]
This kind of approach follows a framework that Blaut calls ‘European
diffusionism’, a Eurocentric structure very much informed by a Weberian way of
thinking, of a unique Western civilisation that sets the standard for modernity
which is then transferred to the rest of the world.[22]
While there may be disagreements as to the origins of a ‘consumer society’, scholars
who believe in ‘European diffusionism’ can agree it did happen in Europe and
that any subsequent consumer societies that emerged would follow a European
model.
Blaut has another theory as to why historians
put the West at the centre of such narratives. This is known as the ‘tunnel history’,
with Blaut arguing that scholars make claims that the West is the centre and
leader of global progress without actually considering what is going on outside
of it.[23]
One of the reasons why there are historians who accept the idea of European
centrality in the progress of modernity may come down to the fact that they
take accounts too much at face value rather than looking beyond them. For
instance, in McClintock’s analysis of Britain’s late nineteenth-century
narrative of soap and in Rappaport’s analysis of British narratives on tea
during the nineteenth-century, both historians are able to show how convinced
the British people had become in thinking that they were civilising the world
by making modern products and spreading them throughout the world.[24]
Hobson by contrast shows that while there were a great many Eastern agents in
the form of merchants and traders actively contributing to formation of a
global economy, they did not create narratives bragging about it.[25]
There is also a case made by Brewer and Trentmann that the original historians
who studied consumption in the 1980s and early 1990s were heavily influenced by
the post-1945 American model narrative of the ‘consumer society’, which saw
‘modern’ consumption as ‘an advancing, seemingly unstoppable wave of a certain
form of materialistic and individualistic ‘consumerism’ that spilled over from
the centre into the periphery.’[26]
The Eurocentric tendencies of sources and of historians seem to be the most
likely cause of why consumption studies have in the past been so limited in
scope and the reason that there was a time when the research and conclusions that
were sought in its name were indeed Eurocentric. However as Clunas’
scope-enhancing study shows this does not necessarily have to be the case.
In 1991, Clunas stated in his Superfluous Things book that previous
historians had taken a Eurocentric approach to the ‘consumption question’,
because they had rested the empirical basis of historical investigation on European
and North American traditions.[27]
Indeed, Brewer and Porter admitted as much in their book Consumption and the World of Goods which was restricted in scope to
the ‘histories of Europe and North America.’[28]
Conversely, by focusing on the treatment and ideas about luxury goods and
commodities in Ming China, Clunas showed that the consumption patterns that
Eurocentric historians like to say were unique to early modern European
societies were in fact present in China during or even before their development
in Europe.[29] If
we are to take Robert’s definition of Eurocentricism in relation to Cluna’s
evidence, we realise that claims made about ‘consumer societies’ being unique
to the western world are false, because they are not based on facts but
assumptions. It is thanks to historians like Clunas that conclusions made by
historians looking into the history of consumption are not necessarily Eurocentric.
During the 1990s numerous
historians began to join Clunas in expanding the geographic scope of
consumption studies. Pennell stated in an article in 1999 that she believed
that the grand Eurocentric narratives of ‘consumer revolution’ and the linear progress
of Western modernity had been so undermined by global micro-histories that they
have become impractical narratives for historical analysis. Pennell said that in its place what was
needed was ‘a new analytical level which is at once challenging, penetrating,
and yet above all historically practical.’[30]
There are historians like Mellor who have come to realise that Eurocentric
narratives regarding Western exclusivity in the history of modernity and the
intensification of consumption will only find legitimacy if the history of the
rest of the world is ignored or repressed.[31]
The Eurocentric narratives of
‘consumer revolutions’, globalisation and consumption have provided the subject
with a general framework. Brewer and Trentmann make the point that to confine
the history of consumption to micro-histories or ethnographic studies the topic
runs ‘the risk of losing the multiple levels across time and space which
influence consuming cultures on the ground.’[32]
There are clearly therefore problems in moving away from this Eurocentric model
and from European ways of thinking, and in fact some who try to avoid a
Eurocentric approach are unable to ignore certain elements of it. While Clunas
praises Burke for being the only one to provide a non-European perspective in Consumption and the World of Goods, it
seems that even he is unable to avoid the framework set down by his
predecessors.[33] The noticeable European angle of his work is
understandable due to the fact he is a European historian. The models and
theories he uses were all European. He notes that the strategy for his work follows
theories on capitalism and material culture constructed by Weber and Braudel. He
states the case of the Qing dynasty’s nouveaux
riches ‘Salt fools’ fits in with the ‘conspicuous consumption model’ which
has been constructed during the luxury debates centred on early modern Europe
and he notes that the ‘Genroku Era’ as an ‘example every Marxist historian of
early modern Europe would pray for.’[34]
Applying Western models to non-Western contexts is still evident in recent
studies. In the 2006 book Consuming
Cultures, Global Perspectives, a professor of modern Japanese called Garon
analysed Japan’s ‘consumer revolution’ of the 1950s and 1960s to see how the post-1945
‘Western’ models of European thrift and American austerity applied to Japan.
Although Garon’s micro-history pays a lot of attention to the political,
social, economic and cultural context of Japan, the article is ultimately
seeking to find out how they compare to these Western models.[35]
As has been indicated before, the theories and empirical work done on the
history of consumption had up until the early 1990s been predominantly based upon
Western history and Western thinking. In critiquing the Eurocentric conclusions,
Burke and Clunas could not avoid using the framework that had already been
established because there was no alternative. In fact their main aim was not to
show how their non-western areas of study were unique but actually to show that
the West was not as unique as depicted. Thus, in their attempt to undermine the
traditional narrative, they inevitably partook in many of its frameworks.
However this is not to say that the
initial standard set by consumption studies would stay that way, in fact Brewer
and Porter actually referred to it as a ‘historiographically immature’ category
of analysis as opposed to one ‘irredeemably ideologically loaded’ in their 1993
book.[36]
And so it has since proved, most notably in the form of Brewer and Trentmann’s
2006 book Consuming Cultures, Global
Perspectives which sets out by saying that the topic is full of such a
diverse array of material that a single interpretative framework will never do,
such as the one that had reduced global history to the Eurocentric view of a
the growing triumph of neoliberal consumerism.
In their introduction they outlined the need for more fluid frameworks
that enable greater insights into the importance of consumption in an
historical context:
‘We need, in
other words, to trace consumption along axes of time as well as space,
identifying points of convergence, divergence and rupture. An effective
analysis has to take into account the position of different actors and
institutions along these axes, examining power relations and the different
discourses and values that give meaning to consumers’ actions and the goods and
services they consume.’[37]
Dikötter sets out a framework that
follows the theories of anthropologist Appadurai, who in 1986 had advocated a
‘new’ way of viewing the circulation of commodities. Instead of focusing on the
forms and functions of exchange, Appadurai argued important insights could be
gained into the politics of the link between exchange and value by studying the
social lives of commodities. Appadurai suggested that understanding the
meanings of commodities, their forms, uses and trajectories, could ‘illuminate
their human and social context.’[38]
Dikötter
argues that the Chinese in the early twentieth-century had agency in their
relationship with the globalised economy; they did not just accept any foreign
consumer goods but bought what was of use to them. Some of these purchased
consumer goods were used in the way originally intended by the producer, but in
other cases commodities formed different meanings for Chinese consumers and
were utilised in different ways.[39]
For instance the introduction of glass mirrors to the Chinese market actually
reinforced a traditional, cosmological conception some Chinese people had about
spatial relationships and spiritual forces. The reflective abilities glass
mirrors had led to the perception that they would be more effective than the
traditional spirit screens placed at the entrances of households in order to
prevent evil spirits from entering the home, which is how many glass mirrors
ended up being used in the context of early twentieth-century China.[40]
The historians who contributed to Consuming Cultures, Global Perspectives feel
they have reason to be optimistic about the future of these more fluid
interpretative frameworks. Wilk for instance uses a framework similar to
Trentmann’s, of how social identities influence patterns of consumption, to
analyse the binge consumption that
occurs amongst workers in the extractive industry.[41]
Wilk concludes by saying he hopes he can compare a greater number and diversity
of ethnographic studies to develop his work on binge consumption amongst extractive workers in a wider context of
socially ‘marginal people who live for the moment’ like gypsies, prostitutes
and street people.’[42]
Whether this comes to fruition is yet to be seen but one thing can be certain,
the greater number of academics involving themselves in consumption studies
will mean even more material and approaches are available to help the subject move
away from its Eurocentric past.
Consuming is a universal practice
but is not one that necessarily revolves around the exchange of commodities or
around worldwide principles. As geographer
Mansvelt notes that the current scope of the topic is extensive:
‘...consuming
practices are not fixed and bounded in place but are fluid, fractured and
changing across space in an increasingly interconnected world. Consumption in a
globalizing world is thus unevenly constituted, characterized by stark
inequalities of poverty and wealth, of hunger and malnutrition in some places
and super-abundance in others, or extravagance and waste amid scarcity and
need.’[43]
There are of course limits in how
willing and able scholars are in confronting the topic academically. In the
past consumption’s historiography had been limited to a framework and scope
that sought to vindicate the narrative of the rise of modern, western
civilisation and the diffusion of a Western consumer society. However, historical
evidence actually showed that the majority of the scholarship attributed to it was
in fact ignorant about the wider world. The more fluid frameworks that have
emerged in the past few years have allowed historical analysis to focus on more
specific issues including that of non-European culture and perspectives. Although
the majority of the work done on the history of consumption has in some way
referenced the West, historians capable of avoiding such references. It will be
interesting to see whether the economic rise of nations like China, India and
Brazil has any affect on the perspectives of future historians.
At the turn of this century, Blaut
noted his concern that the majority of historians accepted a general model that
put Europe at the centre of world history. However Al-Rodhan sees cause for
optimism even in the previously Eurocentric narrative of the rise of
civilisation:
‘Rather than thinking
in terms of multiple civilisations, we need to employ the ocean analogy. Human
civilisation is more fruitfully conceived as a great ocean, joined by many
rivers that contribute to its overall growth. These rivers represent different
geocultural domains that flourish at different points within the larger flow of
human history due to mutual borrowing and encounters.’[44]
It seems that history itself is
beginning to shed many of its Eurocentric frameworks and assumptions that used
to inform its many categories of approach.
[1] C. Clunas, ‘Modernity Global and Local:
Consumption and the Rise of the West’, The
American Historical Review 104 (1999), p.1497.
[2] J. Appleby, 'Consumption in Early Modern
Social Thought’, in L.B. Glickman, (ed.) Consumer
Society in American History: A Reader (Cornell, 1999), p.130.
[3] K. Harvey, History and Material Culture: a Student’s Guide to Approaching
Alternative Sources (London, 2009), pp.8-9.
[4]
Appleby, ‘Consumption Social Thought’, p.130.
[5]
J. Brewer, and F. Trentmann (eds.) Consuming Culture, Global Perspectives: Historical Trajectories,
Transantional Exchanges (King’s Lynn, 2006), p.3.
[6]
Brewer and Trentmann, Globalising
Perspectives, p.viii.
[7] J.M.
Roberts, The Triumph of the West (London,
1985), p.201.
[8] J.M.
Blaut, Eight Eurocentric Historians
(New York, 2000), pp.5-6.
[9] P.N.
Stearns, 'Stages of Consumerism: Recent Work on the Issues of Periodisation', The Journal of Modern History 69 (1997),
p.104.
[10] N.
McKendrick, J.Brewer, and J.H. Plumb, The
Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-century
England (London, 1982), p.13.
[11] Ibid., p.1
[12] Ibid., p.9.
[13] Ibid., pp.13-20.
[14] Ibid., pp.10-11.
[15] Ibid., p.71.
[16]
Stearns, ‘Stages of Consumerism’, pp.106-9.
[17]
Clunas, ‘Rise of the West’, p.15.
[18]
R.A. Goldthwaite, ‘The Economic and Social World of Italian Renaissance
Maiolica’, Renaissance Quarterly 42.
1 (1989), p.31.
[19] L.
Jardine, Worldly Goods: A New History of
the Renaissance (New York, 1996), p.436.
[20] D.
Quataert, (ed.), Consumption Studies and
the History of the Ottoman Empire, 1550-1922 (Albany, 2000), p.1.
[21] D.M.
Anderson, and N. Carrier, ‘‘Flower of Paradise’ or ‘Polluting the Nation’?
Contested Narratives of Khat Consumption’, in J. Brewer and F. Trentmann (eds.)
Consuming Culture, Global Perspectives:
Historical Trajectories, Transantional Exchanges (King’s Lynn, 2006), p.145.
[22]
Blaut, Eurocentric, p.5, p.26
[23] Ibid., pp.56-9.
[24] A.
McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality
in the Colonial Contest (London, 1995), p.226 ; E. Rappaport, (2006)
‘Packaging China: Foreign Articles and Dangerous Tastes in the Mid-Victorian
Tea Party’, in F. Trentmann (ed.), The
Making of the Consumer (Oxford, 2006), pp.135-140.
[26]
Brewer and Trentmann, Global
Perspectives, pp.2-5.
[27] C.
Clunas, Superfluous Things: Material
Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China (Honolulu, 1991), p.3.
[28] J.
Brewer, and R.Porter, (eds.) Consumption
and the World of Goods (London, 1993), pp.3-4.
[29]
Clunas, Superfluous, p.171.
[30] S.
Pennell, ‘Consumption and Consumerism in
Early Modern England’, The Historical
Journal 42, 2 (1999), p.550.
[31] A.K.
Mellor, ‘British Romanticism, Gender, and the Three Wives of Artists’, in A.
Bermingham and J.Brewer, The Consumption
of Culture 1600-1800: Image, Object, Text (London, 1995), p.125.
[32]
Brewer and Trentmann, Globalising
Perspectives, p.2.
[33]
Clunas, ‘Rise of the West’, p.12.
[34] P.
Burke, ‘Res et verba: conspicuous consumption in the early modern world’, in J.
Brewer and R. Porter (eds.) Consumption
and the World of Goods (London, 1993), pp.148-154.
[35]
S.Garon, ‘Japan’s Post-war ‘Consumption Revolution’, or Striking a
‘Balance’ between Consumption and Saving’ in J. Brewer and F. Trentmann (eds.) Consuming Culture, Global Perspectives:
Historical Trajectories, Transantional Exchanges (King’s Lynn, 2006), p.191,
pp.196-7.
[36]
Brewer and Porter, Worldly Goods, p.3.
[37]
Brewer and Trentmann, Globalising
Perspectives, p.13.
[38] A.
Appadurai, (ed.) The Social Life of
Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge, 1986), pp.3-5.
[39] F.
Dikötter, ‘Objects and agency: material culture and modernity in China’, in
K.Harvey (ed.), History and Material
Culture: A Student’s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (London,
2009), pp.159-160.
[40] Ibid., pp.162-5.
[41] F.
Trentmann, ‘The Modern Genealogy of the Consumer: Meaning, Identities and
Political Synapses’, in J. Brewer and F. Trentmann (eds.) Consuming Culture, Global Perspectives: Historical Trajectories,
Transantional Exchanges (King’s Lynn, 2006), p.20; R. Wilk, ‘Consumer
Culture and Extractive Industry on Margins of the World Systems’, in J. Brewer
and F. Trentmann (eds.) Consuming
Culture, Global Perspectives: Historical Trajectories, Transantional Exchanges (King’s
Lynn, 2006), pp.123-140.
[42]
Wilk, ‘Consumer Culture’, pp.138-140.
[43] J.
Mansvelt, Geographies of Consumption (London,
2005), p.4.
[44] N.R.F.,
Al-Rodhan,
Sustainable
History and the Dignity of Man (Zürich, 2009), P.218.
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