Empire of Things

by Frank Trentmann

  79. R. Nave-Herz & B. Nauck, Familie und Freizeit (Munich, 1978), tables 24 and 28.

  80. Sue Walker, Mary Donn & Allan Laidler, ‘New Zealand’, in: Cushman, Veal & Zuzanek, Free Time and Leisure Participation, 183f.

  81. Statistics New Zealand, ‘2002 Cultural Experiences Survey’, in: Key Statistics, Oct. 2003, 9–11.

  82. Georgios Papastefanou & Ewa Jarosz, ‘Complexity of Leisure Activities over the Weekend: Socio-economic Status Differentiation and Effects on Satisfaction with Personal Leisure’, GESIS Working Paper 2012-26. Cologne, Germany: GESIS – Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften, (2012).

  83. Donnat, Pratiques Culturelles des Français: Enquête 1997, 101–3.

  84. Chenu & Herpin, ‘Une pause dans la marche vers la civilisation des loisirs?’, 35; the official 1997 inquiry gives even higher viewing times for those without diploma or Bac: Donnat, Pratiques Culturelles des Français: Enquête 1997, 77.

  85. This is a bold generalization, but not without some empirical support. In France, those spending less than 14 hours a week watching television go twice as often to the theatre, cinema and museum as those who watch 30 hours or more. Some of that might be explained by old age but not all of it – the elderly watch most television and experience a decline in cultural participation. Donnat, Pratiques Culturelles des Français: Enquête 1997, 73–5. For higher activity levels among British managers, see A. Warde & T. Bennett, ‘A Culture in Common: The Cultural Consumption of the UK Managerial Elite’, in: Sociological Review 56, 2008: 240–59.

  86. Only 5–25% of skilled workers had ever frequented any of these venues; Donnat, Pratiques Culturelles des Français: Enquête 1997, 251. Similarly, in sport, there are sharp divides in the level of participation and its intensity: two in three German children play no sport at all, whereas one third play over two hours a day; Statistisches Bundesamt, Alltag in Deutschland, 171

  87. A study of twenty households in Bristol found that those with higher education also pursued more irregular activities: Dale Southerton, ‘Analysing the Temporal Organization of Daily Life: Social Constraints, Practices and their Allocation’, in: Sociology 40, no. 3, 2006: 435–54.

  88. Michael Bittman & Judy Wajcman, ‘The Rush Hour: The Character of Leisure Time and Gender Equity’, in: Social Forces 79, no. 1, 2000: 165–95.

  89. Statistisches Bundesamt, Alltag in Deutschland, 110.

  90. Nicky Le Feuvre, ‘Leisure, Work and Gender: A Sociological Study of Women’s Time in France’, in: Time & Society 3, no. 2, 1994: 151–78, quoted at 171, 173.

  91. International Institute of Not Doing Much, http://slowdownnow.org/.

  92. Reinhard Rudat, Freizeitmöglichkeiten von Nacht-, Schicht-, Sonn- und Feiertagsarbeitern (Stuttgart, 1978); and Voluntary Simplicity: Toward a Way of Life that is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich, Duane Elgin (ed.) (Fort Mill, SC, 1993).

  93. Jean Viard, Le Sacre du temps libre: La Société des 35 heures (La Tour d’Aigues, 2004), esp. 148–55.

  94. Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (Oxford, 2000, 2nd edn) Vol. I, ch. 7.

  95. ‘Habit’ (1892), repr. in Robert Richardson, ed., The Heart of William James (Cambridge, MA, 2010), 110.

  96. Orvar Löfgren, ‘Excessive Living’, Culture and Organization 2007, no. 13, 2007: 131–43, 136.

  97. Martin, Leisure and Society in Colonial Brazzaville.

  98. Brigitte Steger & Lodewijk Brunt, ‘Introduction: Into the Night and the World of Sleep’, in: Night-time and Sleep in Asia and the West, Brigitte Steger & Lodewijk Brunt (eds.) (London, 2003), 1–23.

  99. China National Bureau of Statistics, ‘Summary on 2008 Time-use Survey, transl. Henry Lee for the Australian Time-use Research Group’, 2008. On average, Chinese sleep over an hour longer than Japanese, and a day and forty minutes longer than Britons. The data also suggests they spend less time on social interaction. Only around 10% of Greeks, Italians and French take a midday nap; in Northern Europe, the number is even smaller; see HETUS: https://www.h2.scb.se/tus/tus/AreaGraphCID.html; Wilse B. Webb & David F. Dinges, ‘Cultural Perspectives on Napping and the Siesta’, in: Sleep and Alertness: Chronobiological, Behavioral and Medical Aspects of Napping, eds. David F. Dinges & Roger J. Broughton, (New York, 1989), 247–265.

  100. Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji (Penguin, 2003 edn), 443, 446.

  101. S. Linhart, ‘From Industrial to Post-industrial Society: Changes in Japanese Leisure-related Values and Behavior’, Journal of Japanese Studies 14, no. 2, 1988: 271–307.

  102. The Economist, 27 Sept. 2014, 68.

  103. Sepp Linhart & Sabine Frühstück, eds., The Culture of Japan as Seen through Its Leisure (Albany, 1998); and Joy Hendry & Massimo Raveri, Japan at Play: The Ludic and the Logic of Power (London, 2002).

  104. Levine, A Geography of Time, 145; Robinson & Godbey, Time for Life, 268.

  105. Americans are not alone. In Scandinavian countries, eating is similarly spread across the day; see the HETUS graphs ‘how time is used during the day’: https://www.h2.scb.se/tus/tus/AreaGraphCID.html. To the best of my knowledge, there is, unfortunately, no comparative research to test the relationship between snacking cultures and harriedness.

  106. Mass Observation, Meet Yourself on Sunday (London, 1949), 9f.

  107. See the fascinating study by Eviatar Zerubavel, The Seven-day Circle: The History and Meaning of the Week (Chicago, 1985).

  108. Mass Observation, Meet Yourself on Sunday, quoted at 22, 57.

  109. 1857, quoted in Rosemary Bromley & Robert J. Bromley, ‘The Debate on Sunday Markets in Nineteenth-century Ecuador’, in: Journal of Latin American Studies 7, no. 1, 1975: 85–108, at 98.

  110. John Wigley, The Rise and Fall of the Victorian Sunday (Manchester, 1980); and Brian Harrison, ‘The Sunday Trading Riots of 1855’, in: Historical Journal 8, 1965: 219–45.

  111. J. A. Kay et al., The Regulation of Retail Trading Hours (London, 1984); Douglas A. Reid, ‘ “Mass Leisure” in Britain’, in: Twentieth-century Mass Society in Britain and the Netherlands, eds. Bob Moore & Hen van Nierop (Oxford, 2006), 132–59. Uwe Spiekermann, ‘Freier Konsum und soziale Verantwortung zur Geschichte des Ladenschlusses in Deutschland im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert’, in: Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte 49, no. 1, 2004: 26–44.

  112. The above takes into account the Finnish law of 2009 which extended the 1994 liberalization; Helsingin Sanomat, 19 Nov. 2009. The Scottish situation has been under review. http://www.scotlandoffice.gov.uk/scotlandoffice/10245.html. For an extensive overview of the situation in 2006, see John Hargreaves et al., ‘The Economic Costs and Benefits of Easing Sunday Shopping Restrictions on Large Stores in England and Wales: A Report for the Department of Trade and Industry’ (May 2006).

  113. David N. Laband & Deborah Hendry Heinbuch, Blue Laws: The History, Economics and Politics of Sunday-closing Laws (Lexington, MA, 1987); and M. Skuterud, ‘The Impact of Sunday Shopping on Employment and Hours of Work in the Retail Industry: Evidence from Canada’, in: European Economic Review 49, no. 8, 2005: 1953–78.

  114. P. Richter, ‘Seven Days’ Trading Make One Weak? The Sunday Trading Issue as an Index of Secularization’, in: British Journal of Sociology, 1994: 333–48.

  115. 22 Jan. 1993, Michael Stern, House of Commons, col. 638, http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199293/cmhansrd/1993-01-22/Debate-3.html.

  116. R. Halsall, ‘Ladenschluss revisited: Will Germany Learn to Love Shopping on a Sunday?’ in: Debatte 9, no. 2, 2001: 188–209, quoted at 202.

  117. In 1994, the female employment rate was 68% in Sweden, 61% in the United Kingdom and 59% in Finland, compared to 35% in Italy, 51% in France and 55% in Germany. See table 5.2 in http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/employment_unemployment_lfs/data/main_tables. See further: Imelda Maher, ‘The New Sunday: Reregulating Sunday Trading’, in: Modern Law Review 58, no. 1, 1995: 72–86; and J. Price & B. Yandle, ‘Labor markets and Sunday Closing Laws’, in: Journal of Labor Research 8, no. 4, 1987: 407–14. The Spanis
h story is distinctive: here, early relaxation came on the heels of major tourist and commercial development after Franco.

  118. N. Wrigley, C. Guy & R. Dunn, ‘Sunday and Late-night Shopping in a British City: Evidence from the Cardiff Consumer Panel’, Area 16, no. 3, 1984: 236–40.

  119. Hargreaves et al., ‘Costs and Benefits of Easing Sunday Shopping Restrictions’.

  120. J. P. Jacobsen & P. Kooreman, ‘Timing Constraints and the Allocation of Time: The Effects of Changing Shopping Hours Regulations in the Netherlands’, in: European Economic Review 49, no. 1, 2005: 9–27. In Britain, the rate of lone parents in employment shot up from 42% to 56% in the decade after Sunday opening. 10% of Sunday workers work in retailing.

  121. Mass Observation, Meet Yourself on Sunday (London, 1949), 57.

  122. Eurostat news release, 147/2013, 15 Oct. 2013; Price Waterhouse Cooper, ‘Annual Global Total Retail Consumer Survey, Feb. 2015’, at: http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/retail-consumer/retail-consumer-publications/global-multi-channelconsumer-survey/assets/pdf/total-retail-2015.pdf; Centre for Retail Research, ‘Online Retailing: Britain, Europe, US and Canada 2015’: http://www.retailresearch.org/onlineretailing.php.

  123. Thomas Rudolph et al., Der Schweizer Online-Handel: Internetnutzung Schweiz 2015 (St Gallen, 2015).

  CHAPTER 11

  1. Compass, ‘The Commercialization of Childhood’ (London, 2006); Juliet Schor, Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture (New York, 2004); Ed Mayo & Agnes Nairn, Consumer Kids: How Big Business is Grooming Our Children for Profit (London, 2009), which includes a list of advocacy organizations; Victoria Carrington, ‘ “I’m in a Bad Mood. Let’s Go Shopping”: Interactive Dolls, Consumer Culture and a “glocalized” Model of Literacy’, in: Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 3, no. 1, 2003, 83–98; Sue Palmer, Toxic Childhood: How the Modern World is Damaging Our Children and What We Can Do about It (London, 2006); and David Buckingham, After the Death of Childhood: Growing Up in the Age of Electronic Media (Oxford, 2000). Compare: Stephen Kline, Out of the Garden: Toys, TV, and Children’s Culture in the Age of Marketing (London, 1993).

  2. James McNeal, The Kids Market: Myths and Realites (Ithaca, NY, 1999); Mayo & Nairn, Consumer Kids, 5–18.

  3. Linda A. Pollock, Forgotten Children: Parent–Child Relations from 1500 to 1900 (Cambridge, 1983). For the older view, see Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood (London, 1962); and Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800 (London, 1977).

  4. Daniel Thomas Cook, The Commodification of Childhood: The Children’s Clothing Industry and the Rise of the Child Consumer (Durham, NC, 2004); see here appendix, fig. 4, for the number of infants’ and children’s stores.

  5. Children’s Charter (1931), full text at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=22593.

  6. Quoted in Cook, Commodification of Childhood, 80, and 75–80 for age divisions.

  7. White House Conference on Child Health and Protection (1929), Section Three: Education and Training, 39. Full text at http://www23.us.archive.org/stream/homechildsection00fjke/homechildsection00fjke_djvu.txt.

  8. Viviana A. Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children (New York, 1985).

  9. Alice Cora Brill & Mary Pardee Youtz, Your Child and His Parents (New York, 1932), quoted at 301, with thanks to Sandra Maß for pointing me to this soure.

  10. Lisa Jacobson, Raising Consumers: Children and the American Mass Market in the Early Twentieth Century (New York, 2004); and Lisa Jacobson, Children and Consumer Culture in American Society: A Historical Handbook and Guide (Westport, CT, 2008).

  11. D. Hamlin, ‘The Structures of Toy Consumption: Bourgeois Domesticity and Demand for Toys in Nineteenth-century Germany’, in: Journal of Social History 36, no. 4, 2003: 857–69. For the earlier period, see J. H. Plumb, ‘The New World of Children in Eighteenth-century England’, in: Past and Present, no. 67, 1975: 64–95.

  12. G. Cross & G. Smits, ‘Japan, the US and the Globalization of Children’s Consumer Culture’, in: Journal of Social History, 2005: 873–90; Gary Cross, Kids’ Stuff: Toys and the Changing World of American Childhood (Cambridge, MA, 1997).

  13. Report of the APA Task Force on Advertising and Children, Section: ‘Psychological Issues in the Increasing Commercialization of Childhood’, 20 February 2004.

  14. Sonia Livingstone, ‘Assessing the Research Base for the Policy Debate over the Effects of Food Advertising to Children’, in: International Journal of Advertising 24, no. 3, 2005: 273–96.

  15. Barrie Gunter & Adrian Furnham, Children as Consumers: A Psychological Analysis of the Young People’s Market (London, 1998), esp. chs. 5–6. D. R. John, ‘Consumer Socialization of Children: A Retrospective Look at Twenty-five Years of Research’, in: Journal of Consumer Research 26, no. 3, 1999: 183–213.

  16. Marvin E. Goldberg, ‘A Quasi-experiment Assessing the Effectiveness of TV Advertising Directed to Children’, in: Journal of Marketing Research 27, no. 4, 1990: 445–54. Compare: Gunter & Furnham, Children as Consumers, 151–4.

  17. See especially Viviana Zelizer, ‘Kids and Commerce’, Childhood 9, no. 4, 2002: 375–96; Lydia Martens, Dale Southerton & Sue Scott, ‘Bringing Children (and Parents) into the Sociology of Consumption: Towards a Theoretical and Empirical Agenda’, in: Journal of Consumer Culture 4, no. 2, 2004: 155–82.

  18. S. L. Hofferth & J. F. Sandberg, ‘How American Children Spend Their Time’, in: Journal of Marriage and Family 63, no. 2, 2001: 295–308.

  19. McNeal, Kids Market, 69–71. ‘The Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (Next Steps) Summary Report of Wave 1’ (2004).

  20. Elmar Lange & Karin R. Fries, Jugend und Geld 2005 (Münster, 2006).

  21. Elizabeth M. Chin, Purchasing Power: Black Kids and American Consumer Culture (Minneapolis, MN, 2001), esp. 82–5, 126, 161–2.

  22. The following draws on Mizuko Ito, ‘Play in an Age of Digital Media: Children’s Engagements with the Japanimation Media Mix’, in: Abe Seminar Paper, 2002; and M. Ito, ‘Mobilizing the Imagination in Everyday Play: The Case of Japanese Media Mixes’, in: International Handbook of Children, Media and Culture, eds. Kirsten Drotner & Sonia Livingstone (Thousand Oaks, CA, 2008), 397–412.

  23. See the discussion on 266–7 above.

  24. J. U. McNeal & C. H. Yeh, ‘Taiwanese Children as Consumers’, in: European Journal of Marketing 24, no. 10, 1990: 32–43.

  25. Lange & Fries, Jugend und Geld 2005.

  26. From the food diaries collected by Bernadine Chee in Jun Jing, ed., Feeding China’s Little Emperors: Food, Children and Social Change (Stanford, CA, 2000), appendix, 215.

  27. Jing, ed., Feeding China’s Little Emperors, esp. the chapter by Bernadine Chee, ‘Eating Snacks and Biting Pressure’, 48–70. Deborah Davis & Julia Sensenbrenner, ‘Commercializing Childhood’, in: Davis, ed., The Consumer Revolution in Urban China, 54–79.

  28. Stanley C. Hollander & Richard Germain, Was There a Pepsi Generation before Pepsi Discovered It? Youth-based Segmentation in Marketing (Lincolnwood, IL, 1993), esp. 13–48, quoted at 64.

  29. Hollander & Germain, Pepsi Generation, 15.

  30. William C. Beyer, Rebekah P. David & Myra Thwing, ‘Workingmen’s Standard of Living in Philadelphia: A Report by the Bureau of Municipal Research of Philadelphia, NY, 1919: 67.

  31. See 310–14 above.

  32. B. Søland, ‘Employment and Enjoyment: Female Coming-of-age Experiences in Denmark, 1880s–1930s’: in Mary Jo Maynes, Birgitte Søland & Christina Benninghaus, eds., Secret Gardens, Satanic Mills: Placing Girls in European History, 1750–1960 (Bloomington, IN, 2005), 254–68.

  33. Richard Ivan Jobs, Riding the New Wave: Youth and the Rejuvenation of France after the Second World (Stanford, CA, 2007), 80 and 106–12.

  34. See 313 above, and Dorothea-Luise Scharmann, Konsumverhalten von Jugendlichen (Munich, 1965); Friedhelm Neidhart, Die Junge Generation, issue 6 (Opladen, 1970, 3rd rev. edn).

  35. Richard Hoggart, The Uses
of Literacy, (1957), ch. 7.

  36. Rhona Rapoport & Robert N. Rapoport, Leisure and the Family Life Cycle (London, 1975), quoted at 108.

  37. August B. Hollingshead, Elmtown’s Youth and Elmtown Revisited (New York, 1975), quoted at 375. Hollingshead, Elmtown’s Youth: The Impact of Social Classes on Adolescents.

  38. Yuniya Kawamura, ‘Japanese Teens as Producers of Street Fashion’, Current Sociology 54, no. 5, 2006: 784–801.

  39. G. C. Hoyt, ‘The Life of the Retired in a Trailer Park’, in: American Journal of Sociology, 1954: 361–70.

  40. David I. Kertzer & Peter Laslett, Aging in the Past: Demography, Society and Old Age (Berkeley, CA, 1995); Paul Johnson & Pat Thane, eds., Old Age from Antiquity to Post-modernity (London, 1998); Fünfter Bericht zur Lage der älteren Generation in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Potenziale des Alters in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Berlin, Aug. 2005: 35.

  41. Dora L. Costa, The Evolution of Retirement: An American Economic History 1880–1990 (Chicago, 1998).

  42. Costa, ‘The Evolution of Retirement: Summary of a Research Project’, at 234.

  43. Recreation, May 1952: 99.

  44. William Graebner, History of Retirement: The Meaning and Function of an American Institution 1885–1978 (New Haven, CT, 1980).

  45. W. Andrew Achenbaum, Shades of Grey (Boston, 1983); and W. Andrew Achenbaum, Old Age in the New Land: The American Experience since 1790 (Baltimore, MD, 1978).

  46. Granville Stanley Hall, Senescence: The Last Half of Life (New York, 1922), quoted at xi, 376–8.