'The mystical character of commodities': the consumer society in 18th-century England

Abstract

This article argues for an alternative response to the 'consumer society' hypothesis for 18th-century England, which is seen to focus on large-scale development and obscure the relations between people and objects. Returning to Marx's theories regarding 'consumer fetishism' and utilising Bruno Latour's work on hybrids and the human and the non-human, the paper considers the manner in which people used objects and objects used people. Utilizing the courtesy books and 'it-narratives' of the 18th century and the later works of Jane Austen, the paper argues that goods should not be seen only as commodities.     

Differential Imagery Experience and Ut Pictura Poesis in the 18th-century

That the ability to visualise, to see with ‘the mind's eye’, varies between individuals has been known since Francis Galton reported on the results of his ‘Breakfast Table’ questionnaire in 1880. Research in the ensuing years has supported what Galton's surveys suggested: that the vividness of the population's mental imagery lies across a spectrum, with small percentages at the extremes being bereft of imagery or visualising with near percept-like quality. This paper explores what impact this factor of individual psychological difference had on the literary-theoretical debate over ut pictura poesis — whether poetry can or should emulate painting — as it culminated in the 18th-century. After making the case for personal experience of imagery being an influencing factor on the position that critics in the period took on ut pictura poesis, the paper concludes by engaging with the methodological and conceptual difficulties — for the philosophy of science as much as for literary theory and history — that the line of argument produces.     

Midwives as expert witnesses in the 18th-century Finnish courts of justice

ABSTRACT

In this article, I will explore how legalized Finnish midwives acted as expert witnesses in court hearings before 1809, how they worded the statements they gave in court, on what grounds they decided a woman was pregnant or had given birth, and what signs they considered as indicating a miscarriage or the birth of a full-term infant. Their work as expert witnesses relied on their midwifery training as well as their learned knowledge of the anatomy of the female body and the physiology of birth. Ultimately, their knowledge was supported by contemporary guidebooks on midwifery and forensic medicine. As expert witnesses, the trained and legalized midwives of the eighteenth century can be seen as having been legally literate women, who had a duty to provide oral or written evidence to the court and other instances who demanded it. Midwives were capable of using understandable medical and legal terminology in terms of the processing of the court case in their testimony. The forensic examinations carried out by legalized midwives and the expert witness statements they gave also demonstrate the professional skills and expertise of these women.. Their testimonies also show that they were familiar with the characteristics of infanticide referred to in the Swedish medical and forensic literature.     

Demographic events and economic conditions of rural households in Bangladesh

Demographic events, such as death of adults and marriage of children, place a heavy burden on household economy, while economic and labour migration may lessen the burden. This study examined the effects of demographic events on economic condition of rural households in Bangladesh. Household possessions of durable assets in the Matlab demographic surveillance area in 1996 and 2005 were used to calculate asset scores, a proxy for long-term economic condition. Events of adult (aged 15–59 years) death and marriage of girls during 1996–2005 were associated with lower asset scores in 2005 compared to households with no such events. Out-migration of adult males, but not females, to urban areas or other countries and marriage of boys were associated with higher asset scores in 2005 compared to households with no out-migration or boy's marriage. Findings suggest that the government should attach high priority to adult health, abolition of dowry, and encourage out-migration.     

Veblen goods and urban distinction: The economic geography of conspicuous consumption

A fundamental observation of 21st century cities is that they have become great centers of consumption. In this paper, we seek to understand the geographic variation in consumer behavior. Using Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE), we analyze how consumption differs across 21 major U.S. metropolitan areas, and the association between urban characteristics and consumption. We extend previous geographic analysis of consumption to include luxury goods that are socially visible (conspicuous consumption) and luxury goods that are relatively less visible (inconspicuous consumption). Our analysis shows that conspicuous consumption is more sensitive to an urban context than is inconspicuous consumption.     

Welsh Indians and savage Scots: History, antiquarianism, and Indian languages in 18th-century Britain

This paper compares late eighteenth-century claims for the authenticity of Macpherson's Ossian and for the existence of Welsh Indians. It shows that although both claims were supported in part by appeals to similarities between Celtic and American Indian languages, the appeals in each case were very different. On the one hand, the Edinburgh literati who supported Ossian's authenticity focused on expressive structures shared by all primitive societies. On the other hand, radically Protestant antiquarians and philologists focused on lexical similarities that they argued demonstrate a genetic link between certain American Indians and the Welsh. The paper uses this fundamental difference underlying a superficial similarity, to explore in greater detail the distinction between philosophical historians among the Edinburgh literati, who were religiously moderate, politically conservative, and promoted Scotland's integration into a modern, polite, commercial and English-speaking empire, and the Welsh antiquarians, who were religious and political radicals and whose interest in the Welsh Indians reflected and reinforced their attempts to resurrect a distant golden age of Celtic Britain.

pe’nguin. (1) A bird. This bird was found with this name, as is supposed, by the first discoverers of America; and penguin signifying in Welsh a white head, and the head of this fowl being white, it has been imagined, that America was peopled from Wales …

—Samuel Johnson, Dictionary of the English Language, 1755.     

Welsh Indians and savage Scots: History,antiquarianism, and Indian languages in 18th-century Britain

This paper compares late eighteenth-century claims for the authenticity of Macpherson's Ossian and for the existence of Welsh Indians. It shows that although both claims were supported in part by appeals to similarities between Celtic and American Indian languages, the appeals in each case were very different. On the one hand, the Edinburgh literati who supported Ossian's authenticity focused on expressive structures shared by all primitive societies. On the other hand, radically Protestant antiquarians and philologists focused on lexical similarities that they argued demonstrate a genetic link between certain American Indians and the Welsh. The paper uses this fundamental difference underlying a superficial similarity, to explore in greater detail the distinction between philosophical historians among the Edinburgh literati, who were religiously moderate, politically conservative, and promoted Scotland's integration into a modern, polite, commercial and English-speaking empire, and the Welsh antiquarians, who were religious and political radicals and whose interest in the Welsh Indians reflected and reinforced their attempts to resurrect a distant golden age of Celtic Britain.

pe’nguin. (1) A bird. This bird was found with this name, as is supposed, by the first discoverers of America; and penguin signifying in Welsh a white head, and the head of this fowl being white, it has been imagined, that America was peopled from Wales …     

Winters without women: social change,split households and gendered labour in rural Mongolia

In this article, I use absence as a lens to explore social change and masculinity in rural Mongolia, with a focus on household splitting during winter months. Since the breakdown in state-sponsored dormitory systems, many mobile pastoralists split their households to accommodate children during the school year. This results in women moving to settled centres while men remain in pastures to care for livestock. In critical reflections on rural work, both male and female herders have underscored concerns around the absence of women in rural homes. In Mongolia, absence has different implications for men and women, gendered division of labour and social roles, which are tied to household economies and pastoralist work practices. Drawing from ethnographic field research, the cases contribute to understandings of the co-constitutive nature of space and society, and attempts to dislodge ideas about the fixed nature of households in rural Mongolia.     

Gender,households and reintegration: everyday lives of returned migrant women in rural northern Ghana

Since the late 1990s, migration of single women from the rural north to the urban south in Ghana has been making up a growing share of migrant streams. While the livelihood strategies of these migrant women in their southern destinations have been recently examined, the experience of reintegration for those who return to their place of origin has rarely been studied. Drawing on qualitative research with migrant women, returned migrant women (RMW) and their family members, this study examines everyday reintegration experiences of RMW within their households in a rural Dagomba community in Northern Region, Ghana. We conceptualise the household as an arena of everyday life wherein RMW exercise agency to learn to generate livelihoods that support their own as well as household members’ joint well-being. We combine this conceptualisation of household with feminist scholars’ recognition of gender as situated process. Our conceptualisation makes it possible to illuminate gender dynamics around the everyday repetitive decision-making acts that constitute livelihood generation as performed by RMW within specific intra-household dynamics in the context of reintegration in the situated community. Through the examination of the diverse and contradictory ways in which RMW exercise agency in making decisions about livelihood strategies within their households in the studied community, we show how the everyday repetitive acts of RMW contribute to micro-transformations of a situated gender ideology.     

Care,pay, love: commodification and the spaces of live-in care

This paper investigates uses of the concept of commodification in contemporary analyses of waged care. Drawing on theoretical work on commodification and discourse-analytical research on private live-in care in Switzerland, I explore how Swiss live-in care questions central discussions in the literature. Scholars have focused on the ways in which care is embroiled within market relations and the adverse effects of commodification on the character and quality of care. The paper outlines the two central discussions, identifies important limitations and explores the ways in which Swiss live-care contests their underlying assumptions. Swiss live-in care exhibits intricate processes of waging elder care. Live-in care services are offered and arranged on agency websites while taking place at elderly persons’ private households. Elder care thus becomes entangled in market relations both in virtual spaces and at home. Furthermore, live-in care workers do not distance themselves from their work but actively seek to improve their conditions of work. In so doing, they complicate the assumption that paying for care corrupts caregiving or turns it into a product for sale. Based on this evidence from Swiss live-in care, I propose that a careful use of commodification might best serve feminist interventions.     

In pursuit of grandeur: France,colonialism and nationalism in Africa and the South Pacific

Robert Aldrich. The French Presence in the South Pacific, 1842–1940. London, Macmillan, 1990. xii + 387 pp. A$49.95 (cloth).

Francis Terry McNamara. France in Black Africa. Washington, National Defence University, 1989. xx + 289 pp. US$8.00 (paper)

David Robie. Blood on their Banner. Nationalist Struggles in the South Pacific. Leichhardt, Pluto Press Australia, 1989. 310 pp. A$19.95 (paper).     

Bites, nibbles, sips and puffs: new exotic goods in Norway in the 18th and the first half of the 19th century

The slow but significant changes in the material culture of European households that took place in the pre-industrial period are visible in several ways, such as in the changing patterns of housing, furnishing and clothing which have been illustrated in several studies. However, most of these studies focus on the pre-industrial economic leaders, often ignoring the changes taking place on the margins of the economic growth centres. This article seeks to rectify this by looking at changes in the material culture in one such 'marginal' country, namely Norway. The goods focused upon in this case are sugar, tobacco and coffee, which are often termed as exotic goods. These were new commodities in the 18th century and precisely because of their novelty and foreign origin, it is in many cases possible to trace how they spread in rural society, as well as how they impacted it. The emphasis has been put on rural areas for the simple reason that this was where the overall majority of Norwegians lived at the time.     

Policies and Ideologies of the Kim Jong-un Regime in North Korea: Theoretical Implications

Soon after the death of Kim Jong-il on 17 December 2011, his youngest and previously least-known son, Kim Jong-un, was declared the next leader of North Korea. At least for now, it seems clear that the Kim Jong-un regime is determined to uphold the established policies and ideologies of its predecessor. The present study attempts to explain why that is the case using path-dependence theory. Obviously, the old policies and ideologies are intimately bound up with the political processes of the present regime. North Korea’s unique monolithic system, comprising the Juche ideology and the military-first policy, which was constructed during the Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il regimes, has exerted a comprehensive influence on the country’s political and socioeconomic development processes for decades, and it is clear that the existing policy and the institutional framework based on it wield a powerful influence on the current political processes. This greatly restricts the autonomy and the range of choices of the new incumbent, suggesting that path dependence is relevant in the case of the North Korean regime.     

Anti-racist activism and the memory of colonialism: race as Republican critique after 2005

In 2005, French public debates increasingly focused on coming to terms with the memory of colonialism. This new interest in the country’s colonial history owed a great deal to the activity of a new kind of anti-racist organisation that prioritised the need to trigger a broad public debate about issues of race and memory. This article will examine the emergence of two of these organisations: Les Indigènes de la République and the Conseil Représentatif des Associations Noires. Both organisations were founded in 2005 and established themselves as well-known actors in France’s anti-racist scene through the appropriation of different aspects of France’s memory of colonialism. Indeed, their interventions concentrated on the way colonial legacies influenced contemporary Republican discourse and especially on the role of ‘race’ in contemporary France. Simultaneously, however, these organisations differed in their goals and understandings of activism. Through their cases, this piece will argue that anti-racist activists initiated a public debate on the memory of colonialism in order to find new ways to combat contemporary discrimination in France rather than thematising memory for the sake of remembrance.     

Settler colonialism and cultural policy: the colonial foundations and refoundations of Canadian cultural policy

This article aims to reintegrate the colonial history of Canada as part of the grids of analysis for understanding the evolution of its Federal cultural policy. Building on the notion of settler colonialism and its implication for Indigenous population (For the purposes of this paper, the term ‘Indigenous’ is used in place of, perhaps, more popular or familiar terms – such as ‘Aboriginal’ or ‘Native’ – in order to remain consistent with current Indigenous politics. In particular, some Indigenous scholars are reluctant to accept the label Aboriginal because they feel it is consistent with the colonial order imposed by the Canadian government [Alfred and Corntassel 2005, p. 599]). The term Indigenous also alludes to a global political awareness and to forms of alterity between different populations from North America, South America, Asia, and the Pacific. in Canada, this paper documents different transformations in cultural policy and illustrates some of its paradoxes and challenges. Building on principles developed by Indigenous scholars, this article highlights some of the components for decolonizing cultural policy in Canada. It is argued that a post-colonial cultural policy must build on the grounds of ethics (and ethos).