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This volume brings together research on retailing, shopping and urban space; themes that have attracted wide interest in recent decades. The authors argue that the 'modernity' of the nineteenth century is often over-emphasised at the expense of recognising earlier innovation.
Throughout history, fashion has emerged as one of the most powerful driving forces determining the political, economic and social ramifications of the production, distribution and circulation of goods. Indeed fashion, especially in relation to clothing and textiles, shapes the relationship between self and society in unique ways. In this light, the collected papers in this volume position fashion as the lens - the critical mediating force - through which to analyse and understand cultural, economic and political shifts within a broad spectrum of societies in Europe, Asia, Africa and America from the seventeenth to twenty-first centuries. Topics include a seventeenth-century failing fashion r...
A bold new interpretation of 'consumer revolution' in 18th-century Europe, examining globalization and the politics of consumption in the age of Revolution.
The practices of beauty -- A market for beauty -- Advertising beauty -- Maligning beauty -- Domesticating beauty -- Selling natural artifice -- Selling the orient -- Selling masculinity.
This innovative new book is overtly and explicitly about female agency in eighteenth-century European towns. However, it positions female activity and decisions unequivocally in an urban world of institutions, laws, regulations, customs and ideologies. Gender politics complicated and shaped the day-to-day experiences of working women. Town rules and customs, as well as police and guilds’ regulations, affected women’s participation in the urban economy: most of the time, the formally recognized and legally accepted power of women – which is an essential component of female agency – was very limited. Yet these chapters draw attention to how women navigated these gendered terrains. As t...
Combining historical, historiographical, museological, and touristic analysis, this study investigates how late medieval and early modern women of the Low Countries expressed themselves through texts, art, architecture and material objects, how they were represented by contemporaries, and how they have been interpreted in modern academic and popular contexts. Broomhall and Spinks analyse late medieval and early modern women's opportunities to narrate their experiences and ideas, as well as the processes that have shaped their representation in the heritage and cultural tourism of the Netherlands and Belgium today. The authors study female-authored objects such as familial and political lette...
Contrary to early modern patriarchal assumptions, this study argues that rather trying to impose obedience or enclosure on women of their own rank and status, noblemen in early modern Spain depended on the active collaboration of noblewomen to maintain and expand their authority, wealth, and influence. While the image of virtuous, secluded, silent, and chaste women did bolster male authority in general and help to assure individual noblemen that their children were their own, the presence of active, vocal, and political women helped these same men move up the social ladder, guard their property and wealth, gain political influence, win legal battles, and protect their minor heirs. Drawing on...
A Cultural History of Shopping was a Library Journal Best in Reference selection for 2022. The 'consumer revolution' of the 18th century has been the subject of much debate among historians but it seems clear there was also a 'retail revolution': a period of unprecedented growth in material goods was accompanied by a proliferation of retail spaces and techniques which brought new fashions and imported commodities to the homes of consumers. Governments responded to a growing culture of polite and civilized behavior across society by stimulating urban renewal for leisure and shopping: new pavements, street lighting, green promenades, theatres, coffee houses, and adjacent shopping streets were ...
1. Introduction. -- 2. The fairs of early modern Italy / E. Welch. -- 3. Renewal of the shop system: Italy in the early modern period / D. Calabi. -- 4. 'Piu honorati et suntuosi ala Republica': botteghe and luxary retail along Siena's Strada Romana / F. Nevola. -- 5. From the market to the shop: retail and urban space in late medieval Bruges / P. Stabel. -- 6. Markets, shops, inns, taverns and private houses in medieval English trade / R. Britnell. -- 7. Sites of desire: shops, selds and wardrobes in London and other English cities, 1100-1550 / D. Keene. -- 8. Shops, markets and retailers in London's Cheapside, c. 1500-1700 / V. Harding. -- 9. Dealing with diversity: pedlars in the Southern...
In contemporary society it would seem self-evident that people allow the market to determine the values of products and services. For everything from a loaf of bread to a work of art to a simple haircut, value is expressed in monetary terms and seen as determined primarily by the 'objective' interplay between supply and demand. Yet this 'price-mechanism' is itself embedded in conventions and frames of reference which differed according to time, place and product type. Moreover, the dominance of the conventions of utility maximising and calculative homo economicus is a relatively new phenomenon, and one which directly correlates to the steady advent of capitalism in early modern Europe. This ...