ABSTRACT
This chapter examines consumption patterns in various regions in the world during the Fin De Siècle, with an organization by region. Although this organization can potentially exaggerate national or regional distinctions, it is appropriate for two reasons. Consumer culture is defined broadly here, as patterns of buying, selling, and using goods that take into account associated meanings such as status, sociability, enjoyment, taste, fashion, aesthetics, consumer choice, agency, and ethics, as well as anxiety and manipulation. Attention is given to modern patterns of consumption consisting of new methods of retail, spectacle, and advertising, but also linked phenomena such as urban culture, the modern press, leisure, global connections, and tourism. The view of industrialization and its consequences as leading to the emergence of “consumer societies,” first in Europe and the United States in the nineteenth century, has been significantly modified through studies on longstanding phenomena of trade in earlier periods.
