Page 87 - Encyclopedia Of World History

consumerism 437

The common man is the sovereign consumer whose buying or abstention
from buying ultimately determines what should be produced and in
what quantity and quality. • Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973)

ability to tell a person’s social station by looking at his or secularism. A more commercial society blurred class
her clothes. Consumerism also crossed gender lines. lines, while population growth jeopardized established
Women were often unduly blamed for frivolous con- place. Many children, for example, could no longer count
sumerism—men participated heavily as well—but it was on inheriting land or artisanal shops from parents.They
true that women found considerable self-expression in might do all right financially—working for wages in
consumerism. New interests in tea sets and silverware, for domestic manufacturing for instance—but they did not
example, followed from women’s new authority to regu- have access to conventional social markers. Con-
late mealtimes in the family, and furniture and clothing sumerism, as a means of showing a new kind of identity
often sparked interest. and success, could play a crucial role in this context.
Second, modern consumerism involved a new appa- Growing interest in romantic love, another current of the
ratus of shops and commercial inducements. Scholars eighteenth century, also contributed to the commitment
have found the basic elements of consumerist apparatus to acquisition, particularly, of course, in personal apparel.
present in places like Britain in the later eighteenth cen- Additionally, modern consumerism involved a new desire
tury. Not only did shops spread, but owners became for personal comfort.The use of umbrellas, for example,
adept at arranging goods in enticing window displays; provided shelter from bad weather, though some British
they offered loss leaders to lure people in for bargains as stalwarts objected to this “unnatural” indulgence as
a result of which they would also end up buying other umbrella purchases became common in the eighteenth
goods; they advertised widely, often using aristocrats to century. Historians debate the precise mix of factors
testify to the qualities of products like razors or teas. involved, but they agree that consumerism reflected seri-
Josiah Wedgwood, a leader in pottery production in ous values changes, and not simply the imposition of
eighteenth-century Britain, kept careful track of the shops new lures by greedy shopkeepers.
that sold his goods, experimenting with new styles but It is clear, finally, that modern consumerism preceded
with enough market research to learn what ones were industrialization in the West, helping in fact to promote
catching on, what ones should be pulled back.There were it through heightened demand for products like clothing.
even early signs of consumerist leisure: Commercial cir- Growing enthusiasm for cotton cloth, one of the motors
cuses, for example, began in France in the late seven- of early industrialization, reflected not only its cheapness
teenth century (though they had been known earlier in but also the ability to dye it in bright colors, catching the
Asia). By the late eighteenth century otherwise traditional eye of eager consumerists.
rural festivals were beginning to import entertainers from
the cities. Industrialization
Third, modern consumerism acquired new meanings and Social Critiques
for the people involved. Of course it reflected Europe’s Consumerism and industrialization combined to pro-
growing prosperity (for those with some property—not mote further changes in commercial apparatus. A cluster
yet for everyone). It also reflected new levels of interna- of shops in Paris merged in the 1830s to form the
tional trade. Mass enthusiasm for imported sugar has world’s first department store, and the spread of this kind
been labeled the first instance of modern Western con- of outlet marked the further progress of consumerism on
sumerism, while the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century a global basis. By the 1860s and 1870s, scientists and
interest in tea and coffee helped support the larger enthu- popularizers were also noting a brand-new consumerist
siasm for new tableware. But cultural change was disease, kleptomania, both in Western Europe and the
involved as well. For many people, religious focus was United States, with middle-class women the most com-
declining, and consumerism was an outlet for growing mon victims. Here was a sign, if a deviant one, of the