ABSTRACT
This introductory chapter provides some conceptual and methodological grounding for researching and writing American consumption history. It examines a few basic concepts of consumption and consumer culture, some issues and literature in consumption historiography, types of data sources for consumption history, approaches to the analysis of material artifacts, the topic of historical periodization, and the structuring and scope of this book. Historians distinguish between primary and secondary data sources. Primary sources are forms of evidence produced during the historical period under investigation or, in the cases of autobiography and oral history, produced somewhat later by people who had participated in the events in question. Secondary sources, on the other hand, consist of the literature about the period, such as books and articles, written at an even later date. Periodization, the partitioning of historical narrative, can be shallow unless turning points have robust justification in terms of important events and cultural change.
