ABSTRACT

This chapter outlines the shift from traditional societies to modern, marketplace societies. The use of goods in traditional cultures is described, before turning to new relations of commodity production and exchange that accompanied industrial society. Larger social dynamics such as urbanization, conspicuous consumption, stylization, and the fashion system are introduced through key writers such as Veblen, Simmel, and Marx. To illustrate the massive changes brought about by production and consumption under industrialization, the chapter concludes with an examination of commodity representations in the 1908 Sears catalogue.