ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explains The Wedding Present which is a study of exchange relationships and acts of possession. It traces the transaction of domestic objects, examining how women and men accept and create material and social worlds. The home is the key site of consumption in capitalist culture. It is also a social space, the place where the most enduring relationships are routinely enacted. The book presents contribution to the analysis of the wedding within its larger project of investigating domestic consumption. The study of marriage and consumption can therefore demonstrate the intersections, the connections and conflicts between the practices of everyday life, the rituals that punctuate and dramatize it, and the dynamics of consumer capitalism. The analysis of consumption that the book offers in The Wedding Present, inevitably illustrates a lack of individual control over objects.
