Acknowledging Consumption: A Review of New Studies ed. by Daniel Miller, and: The Politics of Domestic Consumption: Critical Readings ed. by Stevi Jackson and Shaun Moores

Abstract

Book Reviews Acknowledging Consumption: A Review ofNew Studies. Edited by Daniel Miller. New York and London: Routledge, 1995. Pp. vii+341; notes, bibliographies, index. $69.95 (cloth); $24.95 (paper). The Politics ofDomestic Consumption: Critical Readings. Edited by Stevi Jackson and Shaun Moores. New York and London: Prentice Hall, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1995. Pp. vi+351, notes, index. $37.50. Just as the “me” decade of the 1970s encouraged a generation of scholars to develop a new social history of common folk, the infla­ tionary 1980s gave birth to a distinctive scholarly school that falls under the broad rubric “consumer studies.” During the ReaganThatcher years, students of 18th-century Britain and America, in­ cluding Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, Carole Shammas, and Lois Green Carr, were among the first historians to postulate that a con­ sumer revolution constituted the little-understood flip side of the industrial revolution. Some of these historians engaged the tech­ niques of the new social history, examining probate inventories and archeological fragments, as they began writing about the demand side of British industrialization. Concurrently, scholars in other dis­ ciplines, from anthropology to marketing, were acknowledging con­ sumption as a critical phenomenon in modern Western societies and striving to legitimize the analysis of consumer behavior as an appro­ priate academic pursuit. Today, the literature on consumption—including investigations of consumerism, consumer culture, and consumer society—is vast, expanding, and mind-boggling. A little more than a decade after McKendrick and two colleagues published The Birth of a Consumer Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), the bible for a generation of consumer-oriented social and economic historians, professors and curators in myriad universities and museums seek to unravel the mysteries of consumption from their particular vantage points. If this pool of scholarship intimidates the uninitiated histo­ rian of technology, he or she should nonetheless take a big breath and dive in, for consumer studies offers much to those seeking to place their technologies, firms, and industries in exciting new con­ texts. These two anthologies are helpful guides for beginning and advanced students alike. Acknowledging Consumption is the latest edited volume by Daniel Permission to reprint a review published in this section may be obtained only from the reviewer. 493 494 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Miller, a British anthropologist at University College, London, who has been energeticallywriting about mass consumption for a decade. Building on the historiographical framework established in his first book, Material Culture and Mass Consumption (Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell, 1987), Miller asked eight colleagues to write critical essays and to assemble extensive bibliographies that analyze and summarize the status of consumer studies in several disciplines. In his polemical introduction, Miller postulates a theory of consump­ tion that steps beyond negative assessments of consumer society and calls for a new definition of the phenomenon as a dialectic operating in local and global contexts. In Miller’s account, consumption was long neglected as an analytical framework precisely because those charged with studying and monitoring economic activities, that is, economists and policy makers, wore thick theoretical blinders. Al­ though sometimes difficult to digest, Miller’s critique of the disci­ pline of economics is especially insightful, for he castigates the ag­ gregate theories about faceless consumers that have shaped economists’ world views and global policy makers’ homogenizing agendas for generations. With considerable wit, he also evaluates a number ofbig conceptual myths, critiquing notions of consumption as the destroyer of national and local cultures, as the tool of Ameri­ can capitalism, and as the dissolver ofmeaningful social and political relationships. Unquestionably, Miller’s essay is colored by his radical politicalobjectives, for he seesconsumption as a “progressive” (p. 41) force thatshouldbe harnessed to promote an equitable distribution of wealth across the globe. Nonetheless, this introduction—like Miller’s second contribution to thisvolume, an essayon the status ofconsumer studies in anthropology—contains food for thought for those trying to make sense of how and why people use goods and services. Miller’s companions in this volume include academics in market­ ing, sociology, economics, geography, psychology, and media stud­ ies; seven work in English institutions, while one teaches in a North American institution. For readers of Technology and Culture, the most valuable essays...