CONSUMER CAPITALISM AND CULTURE: THE AMERICAN WAY

Abstract

Simon Bronner. Grasping Things: Folk Material Culture and Mass Society in America. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1986. xv + 247 pp. Daniel Horowitz. The Morality of Spending: Attitudes Toward the Consumer Society in America, 1875-1940. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985. xv + 254 pp. Roland Marchand. Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. xxii + 448 pp. The implications of mass consumer capitalism for American social values from the late nineteenth century to the present have proved a challenging quest for interdisciplinary studies. The most rudimentary queries raise fundamental epistemological considerations that divide disciplines in theoretical and methodologi- cal debate. The consequence has been a somewhat eclectic proliferation of interpretation that, even within the various philosophical, ideological and meth- odological traditions, still struggles for agreement on questions as well as method. The three works under review, two by cultural historians and one by a folklorist, reflect the different ground on which interpretation stands, while they provide examples of how each approach raises questions that should stimulate the others sat the level of their basic assumptions and complementary use of data.