Overview
The pathbreaking essays in this collection explore the history of consumption by synthesizing discrete historical literatures on consumer culture, gender, and the history of technology. Luxury hotels and the chocolate industry are among the diverse array of topics these authors use to demonstrate that consumption is both a material and a cultural process. Production and consumption become equally inextricable under close analysis. Tools from both the history of technology and gender studies illuminate how these categories intersect. Although broad social and technological trends influence the outcome of these stories, the authors emphasize the agaency of particular groups, including consumers, workers, manufacturers, and the "mediators" who communicate between producers and consumers. This volume will be of interest to historians in a wide range of fields.
University of Virginia Press
Editorials
Robert L. Frost
His and Hers builds a foundation for the synthesis of two of the most exciting fields in scholarship today: cultural studies and the history of technology. Hayden White first helped open up the domain of cultural studies in history by arguing that ideas and images not only reflect culture, they serve to construct it. This book takes that idea a step further, systematically showing how culture gets inscribed into artifacts and how human intermediation and negotiation construct the meanings of objects and culture.