ABSTRACT
In twentieth-century Britain, consumerism increasingly defined and redefined individual and social identities. New types of consumers emerged: the idealized working-class consumer, the African consumer and the teenager challenged the prominent position of the middle and upper-class female shopper. Linking politics and pleasure, Consuming Behaviours explores how individual consumers and groups reacted to changes in marketing, government control, popular leisure and the availability of consumer goods.From football to male fashion, tea to savings banks, leading scholars consider a wide range of products, ideas and services and how these were marketed to the British public through periods of imperial decline, economic instability, war, austerity and prosperity. The development of mass consumer society in Britain is examined in relation to the growing cultural hegemony and economic power of the United States, offering comparisons between British consumption patterns and those of other nations.Bridging the divide between historical and cultural studies approaches, Consuming Behaviours discusses what makes British consumer culture distinctive, while acknowledging how these consumer identities are inextricably a product of both Britain’s domestic history and its relationship with its Empire, with Europe and with the United States.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part One|100 pages
Gender, Sexuality and Youth: Cultivating and Managing New Consumers
chapter Chapter Two|16 pages
Who is the Queer Consumer? Historical Perspectives on Capitalism and Homosexuality
chapter Chapter Three|15 pages
‘Healthier and Better Clothes for Men’: Men’s Dress Reform in Interwar Britain
chapter Chapter Four|18 pages
Selling, Consuming and Becoming the Beautiful Man in Britain: The 1930s and 1940s
chapter Chapter Five|16 pages
Rational Recreation in the Age of Affluence: The Café and Working-Class Youth in London, c. 1939–1965
chapter Chapter Seven|16 pages
Unwanted Consumers: Violence and Consumption in British Football in the 1970s
part Two|150 pages
In and Beyond the Nation: The Local and the Global in the Production of Consumer Cultures