ABSTRACT
Expectations play a crucial role in modern consumer societies as drivers of demand. In the now vast historical literature on consumption, however, expectations tend to be taken for granted. Rather than starting with individual expectations, therefore, this chapter examines the changing socio-economic, political, and cultural contexts which have nurtured and steered the expectation that consumption will rise and rise. It discusses the formative influence of novelty and fashion, before turning to the role of credit and welfare regimes. The final section addresses the material world and “built-in” expectations in housing and infrastructures. The history of consumption, it is argued, has been marked by a profound dialectic between an expectation of infinite choice and variety on the one hand, and of normalization and standardization on the other. This dialectic raises troubling questions for the agenda of “sustainable consumption.”
