Syllabus/achievement requirements

The articles and chapters marked with * will be available at Kopiutsalget/Akadmika as a compendium.

Required and recommended readings:

*Lendol Calder, “Saving and Spending”, in: Frank Trentmann ed., The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. 348-375. 

*Robert Fitzgerald, “Market and Distribution”, in: G. Jones, J. Zeitlin ed., The Oxford Handbook of Business History, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bernard London, Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence, 1932.

Georg Simmel, “Fashion”, The American Journal of Sociology, 62, 6, May 1957, pp. 541-558

*Joshua Goldstein, “Waste”, in: Frank Trentmann ed., The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. 326-347.

*Susan Strasser, Waste and Want. A Social History of Trash, New York: Holt, chapter 7, Good Riddance, pp. 265-293.

*Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Oxford, Oxford University Press (reissued paperback of 1999), pp. 13-38.

*Naomi Klein, No Logo. Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, New York, Knopf, 1999. Chapter 1, pp. 4-26.

*Michael Miller, The Bon Marché, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1981. Chapter 1, New Stores, pp. 19-47, chapter 2, The Grands Magasins, pp. 48-72; photos pp. 148-; chapter 6, Selling the Store, pp. 190-230; conclusion, pp. 231-240.

*Erika Diane Rappaport, Shopping for Pleasure. Women in the Making of London’s West End, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2000. chapter 2, The Trials of Consumption, pp. 48-73.

*Lawrence B. Glickman, Buying Power. A History of Consumer Activism in America, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 2009. chapter 2, Buy for the Sake of the Slave, pp. 61-89, chapter 3, Rebel Consumerism, pp. 93-114.

*Marie-Emmanuelle Chessel, “Woman and the Ethics of Consumption in France at the Turn of the 20th Century”, in: Frank Trentmann ed., The Making of the Consumer. Knowledge, Power and Identity in the Modern World, Oxford, Berg, 2006, pp. 81-98.

*Rosalind H. Williams, Dream Worlds: Mass Consumption in Late Nineteenth-Century France, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1982. chapter 7, Charles Gide, pp. 276-321.

*Ellen Furlough, Carl Strikwerda ed., Consumers against Capitalism. Consumer Cooperation in Europe, North America, and Japan, 1840-1990, Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield, 199, chapter 1 , pp. 1-53. (It is also highly recommended that you read pp. 54-91 which will be available in the Fronter room).

Clark Eric Hultquist, “Americans in Paris. The J. Walter Thompson Company in France, 1927-1968”, Enterprise and Society, 4: 3, 2003,pp. 471-501.

*Valerie Steele, Paris Fashion. A Cultural History, Oxford, Berg, 1988, pp. 247-259.

*William Leach, Land of Desire. Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture, New York, Vintage books, 1993. Chapter 10, Sell them their Dreams, pp. 298-322.

*Charles Mc Govern, “Consumption and Citizenship in the United States, 1900-1940”, Susan Strasser, Charles McGovern, Matthias Judt, Getting and Spending. European and American Consumer Societies in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 37-58.

*Lizabeth Cohen, “The New Deal State and the Makin of Citizens Consumers”, Susan Strasser, Charles McGovern, Matthias Judt, Getting and Spending. European and American Consumer Societies in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 111-125.

*Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic. The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America, New York, Vintage Books, 2003. Chap. 1 Depression: Rise of the Citizen Consumer, pp. 18-61.

*Uwe Spiekermann, “From Neighbour to Consumer. The Transformation of Retailer-Consumer Relationships in Twentieth-Century Germany”, in: Frank Trentmann ed., The Making of the Consumer. Knowledge, Power and Identity in the Modern World, Oxford, Berg, 2006, pp. 147-174.

*S. Jonathan Wiesen, Creating the Nazi Marketplace, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011, chapter 2, pp. 63-117; chapter 5, pp. 191-230.

*Richard Kuisel,- Seducing the French. The Dilemma of Americanization, Berkeley_, University of California Press, 1993. Chapter 5, The American Temptation. The Coming of Consumer Society, pp. 103-130.

*Sheryl Kroen, “Negotiations with the American Way. The Consumer and the Social Contract in Post-War Europe”, in: John Brewer, Frank Trentmann eds., Consuming Cultures, Global Perspectives. Historical Trajectories, Transnational Exchanges, New York, Berg, 2006.pp. 251-277.

Milena Veenis, “Cola in the German Democratic Republic. East German Fantasies on Western Consumption”, Enterprise and Society, 12, 3, Sept. 2011, pp. 489-524.

*Cheryl Greenberg, “Don’t Buy Where you Can’t Work”, in: Lawrence Glickman, Consumer Society in American History, A Reader, Ithaca, Cornell Universty Press, 1999, pp. 241-273.

*Robert E. Weems, “The Revolution Will be Marketed. American Corporations and Black Consumers During the 1960s”, in: Lawrence Glickman, Consumer Society in American History, A Reader, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1999, pp. 316-325.

Malia McAndrew, “A Twentieth-Century Triangle Trade: Selling Black Beauty at Home and Abroad, 1945-1965”, Enterprise and History, 2010, 17, 4, pp. 784-810.

*Avner Offer, The Challenge of Affluence, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006. Chapter 1-2, pp. 1-38; Chapter 12, Inequality Hurts, pp. 270-301.

*Daniel Horowitz, The Anxieties of Affluence. Critiques of American Consumer Culture, 1939-1979, Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 2004. Chapter 2, Celebratory Emigres; Chapter 4, Critique from Within, pp. 101-128.

Stefan Schwarzkopf, “The Consumer Jury: Historical Origins and Social Consequences of a Marketing Myth”, CHARM papers, 2009, pp. 238-253.

Published May 2, 2016 3:46 PM - Last modified May 2, 2016 3:46 PM