Empire of Things

by Frank Trentmann

  184. Zentralinstitut für Jugendforschung, ‘Jugend und Mode’, Leipzig 1979, mimeogram in Bundesarchiv Lichterfelde, Library, B 6123, table 2.

  185. Janine R. Wedel, The Private Poland (Oxford, 1986).

  186. Bundesarchiv Berlin, DL 102/591, ‘Tendenzen der Entwicklung der Wohnbedürfnisse’, 1971.

  187. Bundesarchiv Berlin, DY 30/2589, Eingaben an Honecker, ‘Informationen über eingegangene Eingaben im 1. Halbjahr 1980’, 15 August 1980.

  188. Bundesarchiv Berlin, DL 102/99, ‘Internationaler Vergleich . . . langlebiger Konsumgüter’, August 1967; DL 102/1425, ‘Zur Differenzierung des Verbrauchs . . . nach Klassen und Schichten . . . 1970–80’; in 1980, 55% of ‘intelligentsia’ households had a washing machine, versus 27% workers. DL 102/1472, ‘Urlaubsreisetätigkeit . . . 1971–80’. See further: Ina Merkel, Utopie und Bedürfnis: Die Geschichte der Konsumkultur in der DDR (Cologne, 1999); and Mary Fulbrook, The People’s State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker (New Haven, CT, 2005).

  189. Bundesarchiv Berlin, DL 102/543, ‘Zur Entwicklung Sozialistischer Verbrauchsund Lebensgewohnheiten der Bevölkerung der DDR ’, appendix 7, table 2: husbands’ share was 12%; other household members’ 8%.

  190. Bundesarchiv Berlin, DL 102/1471 and DL 102/1471; it was a third amongst 12–15-year-old boys.

  191. Bundesarchiv Berlin, DL 102/366, ‘Einkaufsgewohnheiten bei Industriewaren nach der Einführung der durchgängigen 5-Tage-Arbeitswoche’, table 134. Most shops selling clothes opened only one Saturday a month.

  192. Bundesarchiv Berlin Lichterfelde, Library, FDJ/6147: Zentralinstitut für Jugendforschung, ‘Freizeit 69, Abschlussbericht’, Vertrauliche Dienstsache, Oct.–Nov. 1969.

  193. Marc-Dietrich Ohse, Jugend nach dem Mauerbau (Berlin, 2003).

  194. Bundesarchiv Berlin, Lichterfelde (Library): FDJ 6243, Zentralinstitut für Jugendforschung, ‘Freizeit und Freizeitnutzung junger Arbeiter und Schüler in der Wartburgstadt Eisenach’ (Leipzig, 1977), and ‘Jugend und Mode’, Leipzig, 1979, 18.

  195. Chernyshova, Soviet Consumer Culture in the Brezhnev era, 111.

  196. George Gomori, ‘Consumerism in Hungary’, in: Problems of Communism XII, no. 1, 1963: 64–6.

  197. Wolf Oschlies, Jugend in Osteuropa, Vol. II : Polens Jugend (Cologne, 1982), 166–90.

  198. Václav Havel, ‘Power of the Powerless’ (1978), repr. in Living in Truth (London, 1989), esp. 63–5, referring to the trial of the ‘Plastic People of the Universe’.

  199. See 589–96 below.

  200. Annette Kaminsky, Wohlstand, Schönheit, Glück: Kleine Konsumgeschichte der DDR (Munich, 2001), 145.

  201. Bundesarchiv Berlin, DY 30/3261, 14 Sept. 1976. See further: Jonathan Zatlin, The Currency of Socialism (Cambridge, 2007).

  202. Bundesarchiv Berlin, DG/7/1768, 17 March 1986, name changed, my translation.

  203. Bundesarchiv Berlin, DY 30/3261, anonymous, 26 February 1987. An inquiry established that he did have a private Citroën as well as a Lada for business trips.

  204. Bundesarchiv Berlin, DG 7/1769, 26 September 1986; my translation.

  205. Bundesarchiv Berlin, DY 30/3261, 12 Feb. 1981, my translation.

  206. Merkel, Utopie und Bedürfnis, 357–409.

  207. Bundesarchiv Berlin, DY 30/3261, 6 Dec. 1985, name changed, my translation.

  208. For their later nostalgic revaluation and the identity politics of ‘Ostalgie’, see Ina Merkel ‘From Stigma to Cult: Changing Meanings in East German Consumer Culture’, in: Trentmann (ed.), Making of the Consumer, 249–70.

  CHAPTER 7

  1. Statistisk sentralbyrå, NOS Forbruksundersøkelse, http://www.ssb.no/vis/histstat/hist05.html. OECD, National Accounts of OECD Countries, 1953–69 (Paris, 1970), 158–9, 242–3. United Nations, National Accounts Statistics (New York, 2004), table 3.2, 976.

  2. OECD, Towards Sustainable Household Consumption? (Paris, 2002), fig. 1 a–d (household food consumption), 23; and Carol Helstosky, Garlic and Oil: Food and Politics in Italy (Oxford, 2004).

  3. See references in notes 1 and 2 for this chapter and, for other EU countries, Eurostat, Household Final Consumption Expenditure in the European Union, 1995–99 (2002), chs. 2 & 4.

  4. Gronow & Warde, eds., Ordinary Consumption.

  5. Workers up from 5.7% to 6.4%, cadres supérieurs down from 12% to 7%, 1959 to 1979; Nicolas Herpin & Daniel Verger, La Consommation des Français (Paris, 1988), 114.

  6. Shinobu Majima, ‘Affluence and the Dynamics of Spending in Britain, 1961–2004’, Contemporary British History 22, no. 4, 2008: 573–97.

  7. George A. Lundberg, Mirra Komarovsky & Mary Alice McInerny, Leisure: A Suburban Study (New York, 1934), 83. See also: William H. Whyte, Organization Man (New York, 1956).

  8. Lundberg et al., Leisure, 189.

  9. Lundberg et al., Leisure, 149f., 155, 189; Bennett M. Berger, Working-class Suburb: A Study of Auto Workers in Suburbia (Berkeley, CA, 1960), esp. 58–65.

  10. Alison J. Clarke, ‘Tupperware’, in: Roger Silverstone, ed., Visions of Suburbia (London, 1997), ch. 5.

  11. Gail Cooper, Air-conditioning America: Engineers and the Controlled Environment, 1900–1960 (Baltimore, MD, 1998), 157–73; and M. Ackerman, Cool Comfort: America’s Romance with Air-conditioning (Washington, DC, 2002).

  12. Siegfried Stratemann, Das grosse Buch vom eigenen Haus: Eine Entwurfslehre f.d. Eigenheim, 2 (Munich, 1954; 2nd rev, edn), 15, my translation.

  13. Berger, Working-class Suburb.

  14. Rainwater, Coleman & Handel, Workingman’s Wife: Her Personality, World and Life Style, 146–51 for the quotations below. See further: Lizabeth Cohen, ‘The Class Experience of Mass Consumption’, in: The Power of Culture, eds. Richard W. Fox & T. J. Jackson Lears (Chicago, 1993).

  15. Katona, Strumpel & Zahn, Zwei Wege zur Prosperität (Düsseldorf, 1971).

  16. 1960: US 16%, EU area 20%; 1978: US 19%, EU 21%; Barry Bosworth, ‘United States Saving in a Global Context’, fig. 5; www.brookings.edu/testimony/2006/0406macroeconomics_bosworth. aspx.

  17. Ferdynand Zweig, The British Worker (Harmondsworth, 1952); Ferdynand Zweig, The Worker in an Affluent Society (London, 1962); and Ferdynand Zweig, The New Acquisitive Society (Chichester, 1976).

  18. Alan Bennett, Enjoy (London, 1980).

  19. See, esp. Vol. III, John H. Goldthorpe, et al., The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure (Cambridge, 1971), 85–156.

  20. Zweig, The New Acquisitive Society, 15. For class cultures before the 1950s, see Ross McKibbin, Classes and Cultures: England 1918–1951 (Oxford, 1998).

  21. Mike Savage, ‘Working-class Identities in the 1960s’, in: Sociology 39, no. 5, 2005: 929–46. See also: John Foot, Milan since the Miracle: City, Culture and Identity (Oxford, 2001). Devine, Affluent Workers Revisited: Privatism and the Working Class, 57–74, 134–52.

  23. Tony Bennett et al., Culture, Class, Distinction (London, 2009), 9.

  24. Bourdieu, Distinction, 56, 241.

  25. Bourdieu, Distinction, 274–8, and chs. 6 & 7.

  26. Julien Vincent, ‘The Sociologist and the Republic: Pierre Bourdieu and the Virtues of Social History’, in: History Workshop Journal 58, no. 1, 2004: 128–48.

  27. Altenloh, Zur Soziologie des Kino: Die Kino-Unternehmung und die sozialen Schichten ihrer Besucher, 67f.

  28. Bernard Lahire, La Culture des individus: Dissonances culturelles et distinction de soi (Paris, 2004); and Elizabeth B. Silva, ‘Homologies of Social Space and Elective Affinities’, in: Sociology 40, no. 6, 2006: 1171–89.

  29. Bennett et al., Culture, Class, Distinction. Unfortunately, we do not have international research to compare the British situation with societies that have stronger traditions of public theatres. For a different approach, see T. W. Chan & J. H. Goldthorpe, ‘Social Stratification and Cultural Consumption’, in: European Sociological Review 23/1 (2007), 1–19.

  30. For changing leisure practices, see the chapter ‘Not so Fast!’ below.

  31. Ioné Acquah, Accra Survey: A Social Survey o
f the Capital of Ghana, Formerly Called the Gold Coast, Undertaken for the West African Institute of Social and Economic Research, 1953–56 (London, 1958), 154–63; and Phyllis M. Martin, Leisure and Society in Colonial Brazzaville (Cambridge, 1995).

  32. Philip Mayer & Iona Mayer, Townsmen and Tribesmen: Conservatism and the Process of Urbanization in a South African City (Cape Town, 1961); see also their postscript to the 1971 edition. Some of this communal drinking culture re-emerged around hostels: see Leslie Bank, ‘Men with Cookers: Transformations in Migrant Culture, Domesticity and Identity in Duncan Village, East London’, in: Journal of Southern African Studies 25, no. 3, 1999: 393–416. See also: B. A. Pauw, The Second Generation: A Study of the Family among Urbanized Bantu in East London (Cape Town, 1963/1973).

  33. Adam Mack, ‘Good Things to Eat in Surburbia: Supermarkets and American Consumer Culture, 1930–1970’, PhD thesis, University of South Carolina, 2006.

  34. De Grazia, Irresistible Empire, 395, and ch. eight in general.

  35. Stewart Howe, ed., Retailing in the European Union (London, 2002).

  36. Mack, ‘Supermarkets’, 165–73.

  37. Emanuela Scarpellini, Comprare all’americana: Le origini della rivoluzione commerciale in Italia 1945–71 (Bologna, 2001); Emanuela Scarpellini, ‘Shopping American-style: the Arrival of the Supermarket in Post-war Italy’, in: Enterprise & Society 5, no. 4, 2004: 625–68.

  38. Luciano Bianciardi, La vita agra (Milan, 1962), 171, my translation.

  39. Andrew Alexander, et al. ‘The Co-creation of a Retail Innovation: Shoppers and the Early Supermarket in Britain’, in: Enterprise & Society 10, no. 3, 2009: 529–58, quoted at 547. See further: A. Alexander, S. Phillips & G. Shaw, ‘Retail Innovation and Shopping Practices: Consumers’ Reactions to Self-service Retailing’, in: Environment and Planning A 40, 2008: 2204–21; Paul du Gay, ‘Self-Service: Retail, Shopping and Personhood’, in: Consumption, Markets and Culture 7, no. 2, 2004: 149–63; Emanuela Scarpellini, L’Italia dei consumi (Rome, 2008), 229–31; Independent, 26 Oct. 1998 (Sainsbury obituary); Charles Debbasch & Jean-Marie Pontier, La Société française (Paris, 1989), 228.

  40. James L. Watson, ed., Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in East Asia (Stanford, CA, 1997).

  41. My translation.

  42. Janne Poikolainen, ‘Anglo-American Pop Music, Finnish Tango and the Controversial Images of Modernity in Finland in the 1960s’, in: Visa Heinonen & Matti Peltonen, eds., Finnish Consumption: An Emerging Consumer Society between East and West (Helsinki, 2013), quoted at 142 (the musician was M. A. Numminen).

  43. The song is by Jukka Poika. Ermanno Labianca, Canzone per te: Appunti di musica leggera, 1957–2007 (Rome, 2007); Dario Salvatori, Sanremo 50: La vicenda e i protagonisti di mezzo secolo di Festival della canzone (Rome, 2000); Bantigny, Le Plus Bel ge?, 66; and Pirjo Kukkonen, Tango Nostalgia: The Language of Love and Longing (Helsinki, 1996). For later hybrids, see Marco Santoro & Marco Solaroli, ‘Authors and Rappers: Italian Hip Hop and the Shifting Boundaries of Canzone d’Autore’, in: Popular Music 26, no. 3, 2007: 463–88.

  44. Loi no. 86-1067 du 30 septembre 1986 relative à la liberté de communication (Loi Léotard) is available at: http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/Warde et al., ‘Changes in the Practice of Eating: A Comparative AnalysisaffichTexte.do?cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006068930.

  45. Alan of Time-use’, in: Acta Sociologica 50, no. 4, 2007: 363–85; Shu-Li Cheng et al., ‘The Changing Practice of Eating: Evidence from UK Time Diaries, 1975–2000’, in: British Journal of Sociology 58, no. 1, 2007: 39–61. Claude Fischler & Estelle Masson, Manger: Français, Européens et Américains face à l’alimentation (Paris, 2008).

  46. Dale Southerton et al. ‘Trajectories of Time Spent Reading as a Primary Activity: A Comparison of the Netherlands, Norway, France, UK and USA since the 1970s’, CRESC Working Paper 39, 2007; http://www.cresc.ac.uk/publications/documents/wp39.pdf.

  47. W. Griswold, T. McDonnell & N. Wright, ‘Reading and the Reading Class in the Twenty-first Century’, in: Annual Review of Sociology 31, 2005: 127–41; and J. Gershuny, ‘Web-use and Net-nerds: A Neo-functionalist Analysis of the Impact of Information Technology in the Home’, in: Social Forces 82, no. 1, 2003: 139–66.

  CHAPTER 8

  China, Statistical Yearbook (1988 and 1993); for 2009: see http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/2009/indexeh.htm. For Korea, see Laura C. Nelson, Measured Excess: Status, Gender and Consumer Nationalism in South Korea (New York, 2000), 87; for Japan, Partner, Assembled in Japan, tables 6, 1. Diffusion in the United States had been faster than in Britain, see Offer, Challenge of Affluence, esp. 173–80.

  2. If we measure purchasing power parity – that is, what money really buys on the ground – China’s $10 trillion were only second in spending power to the United States in 2009.

  3. The most forceful, recent version of this thesis is Karl Gerth, As China Goes, So Goes the World: How Chinese Consumers are Transforming Everything (New York, 2010), quoted at 192.

  4. A separate issue is whether miraculous growth has been an optical illusion, produced by conventional measurements. The costs from environmental pollution and degradation would eat up around 10% GDP a year, according to Elizabeth C. Economy, ‘The Great Leap Backward’, in: Foreign Affairs, 86/5, 2007, 38–59.

  5. Across the country, the number of shops fell almost five times, while the population was growing; see Martin King Whyte & William L. Parish, Urban Life in Contemporary China (Chicago, 1984), 98–9.

  6. It has since risen to 2.9%, according to the WTO.

  7. Kautilya, The Arthashastra, trans. L. N. Rangarajan (London, 1992), 1.7.1, 145.

  8. See Harald Fuess, Transnational History of Beer in Japan (forthcoming), ch. 3.

  9. T. Matsuda, ‘The Japanese Family Budget Enquiry of 1926–1927’, in: International Labour Review 23, 1931: 388–98. For watches: Pierre-Yves Donzé, ‘Des importateurs suisses de Yokohama aux fabricants d’horlogerie japonais’, in: Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 57, no. 1, 2010: 168–89. The above further draws on Hiroshi Hazama, ‘Historical Changes in the Life Style of Industrial Workers’, in: Japanese Industrialization and Its Social Consequences, ed. Hugh Patrick (Berkeley, CA, 1976), 21–51; Sato, New Japanese Woman; and Penelope Francks, The Japanese Consumer: An Alternative Economic History of Modern Japan (Cambridge, 2009). For Hitoshi’s survey of the North and attitudes to modernity more generally, see Harry Harootunian, Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture and Community in Interwar Japan (Princeton, NJ, 2000).

  10. Leo Ou-Fan Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930–1945 (Cambridge, MA, 1999).

  11. Prakash Tandon, Punjabi Century, 1857–1947 (London, 1961), 110–11.

  12. Frank Dikötter, Things Modern: Material Culture and Everyday Life in China (London, 2006), 55–6, 196–200, and 205–13 for cosmetics, below. See also: Cochran, Inventing Nanking Road: Commercial Culture in Shanghai, 1900–1945.

  13. Olga Lang, Chinese Family and Society (New Haven, CT, 1946), 74.

  14. The title of Carl Crow’s book, published in 1937.

  15. Campbell, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism, 18.

  16. Shanghai Library, Bureau of Social Affairs, The City Government of Greater Shanghai, ‘Standard of Living of Shanghai Laborers’ (1934), 102–4, 157, table XLI.

  17. Malcolm Lyall Darling, The Punjab Peasant in Prosperity and Debt (London, 1925), quoted at xiv, 144, 164–6.

  18. Andrew Gordon, ‘From Singer to Shinpan: Consumer Credit in Modern Japan’, in: Sheldon Garon & Patricia L. Maclachlan, eds., The Ambivalent Consumer: Questioning Consumption in East Asia and the West (Ithaca, NY, 2006), 137–62, at 141.

  19. The following draws on: Garon, ‘Luxury is the Enemy’; Sheldon Garon, ‘Japan’s Post-war “Consumer Revolution”, or Striking a “Balance” between Consumption and Saving’, in: Consuming Cultures, Global Perspectives, eds. John Brewer & Frank Trentmann (Oxford, 2006); and Charles Yuji Horioka, ‘Are the Japanese Unique?�
�, in: Garon & Maclachlan, eds., Ambivalent Consumer, ch. 5.

  20. Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen and Mika Pantzar, ‘The Ethos of Thrift: The Promotion of Bank Saving in Finland during the 1950s’, in: Journal of Material Culture 7, no. 2, 2002: 211–31. See also: Minna Lammi, ‘ “Ett” varttuisi Suomenmaa. Suomalaisten kasvattaminen kulutusyhteiskuntaan kotimaisissa lylhytelokuvissa 1920–69’ (Helsinki, 2006).

  21. This and the above draw on Partner, Assembled in Japan, quoted at 163.

  22. J. Devika, ‘Domesticating Malayalees: Family Planning, the Nation and Home-centred Anxieties in Mid-20th-century Keralam’ (Kerala: Centre for Development Studies: WP340, 2002), 46–9.

  23. Harold Wilhite, Consumption and the Transformation of Everyday Life: A View from South India (Basingstoke, 2008), 89–103.

  24. Indian Statistical Institute, The National Sample Survey, 11th and 12th Rounds, Aug. 1956–Aug. 1957, no. 46, Tables with notes on Consumer Expenditure of Agricultural Labour Households in Rural Areas (Delhi, 1961).

  25. Ashok Gulati & Shenggen Fan (eds.), The Dragon and the Elephant: Agricultural Rural Reforms in China and India (Oxford, 2007).

  26. S. L. Rao & I. Natarajan, Indian Market Demographics: The Consumer Classes (Delhi, 1996); NCAER, India Market Demographics Report 2002 (Delhi, 2002).

  27. Madhya Pradesh, Human Development Report 2007 (Oxford, 2007), 180.

  28. World Bank, New Delhi: ‘Scaling-up Access to Finance for India’s Rural Poor’ (Dec. 2004), report no. 30740-IN: 87% of the rural poor had no access to credit, 71% no savings. The story is similar in Nepal: see Aurora Ferrari, Access to Financial Services in Nepal (Washington, DC, 2007).

  29. The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), Energy Data Directory (Delhi, 2009), 139–41; and Madhya Pradesh, Human Development Report 2007, 13.

  30. Human Development Research Centre and National Rural Electricity Co-operative Association (NRECA), ‘Economic and Social Impact Evaluation Study of the Rural Electrification Program in Bangladesh’ (Dhaka, 2002), with thanks to Anjali Garg for pointing me to this document. In 2007, Bangladesh’s GDP per capita was the 155th lowest in the world ($1,241 PPP), barely ahead of Gambia and Tanzania. It ranked 146th in the overall human development index. See also: Md. Motaher Hossain, ‘Role of Technology in Consumption and Everyday Life in Rural Bangladesh,’ in: Technology in Society, XXXII/2 (2010), 130–6.