Languages of consumption in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe articles in this special issue were written after an International Conference organised by the Universities of Basel and Antwerp in 2022. The conference’s aim was to foster our knowledge of the languages of consumption while using a broad range of sources, languages and regions. The workshop highlighted the importance of various consumption practices, historical actors and their experiences through a myriad of sources and discourses. These vastly differing sources, regions and periodizations between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries offer different perspectives and insights into how languages of consumption developed in a period crucial for expanding and transforming consumer practices. By prioritizing empirical evidence over theory and historiography, a ‘language of consumption’-approach has the merit to reassess the cultural values that are supposed to have accompanied critical consumer transitions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.