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.     

Ideologies of consumption: colonialism and the commodification of goods in 18th-century Virginian and Lowland Scottish rural households

During the 18th century consumers in the transatlantic British cultural world began to adopt new ideologies which informed their consumption behaviours. The acquisition of manufactured objects which were highly commodified played an essential part in this new consumer culture. By classifying household goods according to their commodification upon acquisition, the ideologies of consumption which shaped the decisions of historic individuals can be better understood. This paper proposes a method of classifying ceramics in such a way and demonstrates, using five households in the Scottish Lowlands and Virginia as case studies, the utility of commodification analysis in the investigation of British consumer reactions to the unique circumstances of the colonial period.     

Consumption of Chinese goods in southwestern Europe: a multi-relational database and the vicarious consumption theory as alternative model to the industrious revolution (eighteenth century)

This article discusses the application of new technologies, software coding and computer analysis in the social sciences and humanities, mainly in the field of economic history. In the last two decades, the use of new computer technologies among historians to develop theories and solve questions has fostered a vibrant historiographical debate. However, these new digital tools have largely been used as an end in themselves, rather than as a means to develop hypotheses and answer questions. This has prevented researchers from fully exploiting such technologies in their field. In this article, I discuss how I designed a new multi-relational database using the “Access” package and SQL language to test the “industrious revolution” hypothesis and present the “vicarious consumption” theory as an alternative model for analyzing the eighteenth-century circulation of Chinese goods in the Western Mediterranean region. It presents the cross-referencing method I used to analyze the historical information I collected, mainly from probate inventories and trade records. This method makes it possible to navigate through the data in a way that goes beyond the traditional use of “excel” tables.     

新文化地理学视野下的消费空间研究进展

随着城市消费空间的大规模出现,消费主义景观成为新文化地理学最新、最重要的研究对象之一。相关研究内容主要集中在消费空间的象征意义、消费空间公正、消费空间性别政治和消费空间生产的研究等四个方面。论文从文化解析入手,剖析了消费空间的符号与象征意义、空间权力与空间公正的互构关系,消费主义语境下性别权力的空间诉求、消费空间生产等议题。在此基础上,总结出新文化地理学视野下消费空间的研究趋势：更加强调消费空间的社会、文化意义的研究,关注全球化背景下城市消费景观的塑造与蕴含的意识形态关系,重视探讨与消费空间相对应的现代人本性场所与亚文化体系的构建,以及“时空压缩”下消费空间生产机制与地方性建构的可能。     

The Role of Ordinary Goods in Premodern Exchange

The use of consumption studies to examine the social as well as the utilitarian role played by ordinary domestic goods helps to explain why exchange is a compelling social phenomenon. Under conditions of emergent social complexity, exchange activities become even more important, because a diversity of goods enables an ever-growing number of individuals to demonstrate membership in cross-cutting social groups based on status, ethnicity, age, gender, and profession. An archaeological case study in central India, in which it was found that nonlocal goods were widespread in a medium-sized town in the early centuries A.D., provides data for the evaluation of consumption activities at the household level, in which social subsistence was manifest in the acquisition and use of a shared material culture.     

基于消费者行为分析的区域旅游市场规划方法研究

本文尝试从旅游者消费需求分析角度入手,探讨区域旅游市场规划的方法论创新。本论文引入了动机--行为投射模型,通过对建立在专题旅游市场调查基础上的消费行为数据库的深度剖析,论文揭示了旅游目标市场群体常见的三类消费心理趋向模式(补偿型需求、均衡型需求、超越型需求)以及相对应的旅游产品选择偏好规律。在此基础上提出了区域旅游目标市场群体的心理定位策略,以及相对应的从结构性旅游功能规划到旅游产品、旅游服务供给链连续递进的规划流程体系。即"行为分析(Behavior)-定位(Postioning)-旅游供给(Supple)",简称旅游市场规划的BPS方案。     

基于网络评论内容分析的餐饮消费者行为研究

网络评论是餐饮消费者潜意识中的消费偏好、感知等内在需求的外显投射,是其餐饮消费中最关注内容的外在显现。文章基于内容分析法,以大众点评网为例,对餐饮消费者的网络评论内容进行分析。结果表明:高价位餐厅消费者较低价位餐厅消费者的满意度评价更高,连锁餐厅消费者较单体餐厅消费者满意度更高;不同消费水平的消费者消费偏好有明显差异,低价位餐厅消费者更关注核心诉求,即食物本身的吸引力和价格高低,中价位餐厅消费者更关注服务,高价位餐厅的消费者更关注餐厅的综合品质,消费决策中更看重餐厅的环境、服务等非食物要素;从消费感知角度看,餐饮消费者最关注的前五位要素是:食物、环境、服务、价格和便利性。     

Controlling Acculturation: A Potawatomi Strategy for Avoiding Removal

Abstract

It was not until recently that the focus of archaeological and historical studies has taken attention off the disappearance of Native American culture and focused on evidence that demonstrates multiple strategies used by various Native American groups to sustain themselves in Euro-American society during and after initial European contact. These contemporary analyses demonstrate that while the recognition of power relations within contact relationships is critical to interpreting the views of Native Americans towards Euro-American goods, it is also necessary to note that in the effort to avoid assimilation and removal, these goods often took on significance beyond their utilitarian functions. This article draws from these new theories in an attempt to argue how evidence uncovered from archaeological investigations of three Potawatomi sites in the Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois region reveal significant evidence of how varying ways of viewing commodities led to differing forms of resistance among the Potawatomi during the Removal period.     

The development of the Florentine silk industry: a positive response to the crisis of the fourteenth century

The development of the silk industry in Renaissance Florence – as in other large Italian cities such as Venice, Genoa, Bologna and Milan – was a response to the profound economic changes wrought by the demographic crisis of the fourteenth century. The decrease in the available labour supply, the rise in labour costs, changes in demand and consumption, particularly among the upper classes, encouraged entrepreneurs in Florence and other urban economies of Renaissance Italy to direct their manufacturing interests towards the production of expensive high-quality goods. The Florentine silk industry was born in the last decades of the fourteenth century, and in the fifteenth century quickly developed into a dynamic industry capable of producing large quantities of luxury fabrics for export to all the principal European markets.     

Der unberechenbare Kunde

This article summarizes the evolution of consumption in Germany in the last decades with special focus on the intricacy of demand. The authors discuss some established approaches of marketing and compare it with the actual impact of basic meta trends. Further, the impact of consumption on establish retail locations and new areas to supply is discussed.     

消费地理学研究述评与展望

随着全球化与经济一体化的推进,中国社会已经从生产型社会进入消费型社会,生产与消费的关系也逐渐成为地理学绕不开的研究话题。消费活动以超出我们想象的方式将地方与我者、他者联系起来。消费实践如何与在地化的商品实现连接与互动,是作为人文地理学的子学科消费地理学需要回答的问题。消费地理学是通过消费与其他空间相联系的内在逻辑来解释地方中蕴含的复杂含义。本文回顾了消费地理学的源起与研究脉络,借助消费地理学关于消费空间性、主体性、社会性的分析框架回顾了西方消费地理学的研究概况,并梳理了我国消费地理学的学科基础与研究框架,最后提出了从地理学视角解读消费研究热点话题的新思路与研究范式。     

Globalization,trade, and material culture: Portugal’s role in the making of a multicultural Europe (1415–1806)

SUMMARY: In the Early Modern age, Portugal was among the first European countries to engage in overseas trade and colonial ventures. The influx of new people and things rapidly transformed it into a multicultural country in permanent contact with the rest of Europe and the wider world. While we possess a vast amount of knowledge describing the overseas contacts and acquisition of goods from historical documents, in recent years archaeological excavations have begun to reveal direct evidence of these interactions. This includes thousands of people and objects such as ceramics, ivory and stone artefacts produced in overseas territories in Africa, South America and Asia. They were exported in vast amounts to several European countries, and are frequently found in archaeological excavations. These commodities were in part responsible for changing European perceptions of the world, its dimensions and cultural plurality. They also rapidly left their mark on European goods production, leading to changes in aesthetics and the introduction of new forms. This paper will discuss some of these objects in terms of how they reflect an Early Modern globalized world, and their influence on European daily life.     

Time,hedonic migration,and household production

"A hedonic migration model is developed where regional amenities are viewed as influencing household production within the framework of the new demand theory. The inputs to household production are goods, time and housing. It is shown that economic growth in the economy as a whole will increase the relative attractiveness of regions that are relatively time-saving, in the sense that they have a lower time elasticity of household production. Hence, migration will flow into time saving regions and housing costs in those regions will rise as real GDP grows." The implied geographical focus is on the United States.     

Working,Shopping, and House Rents

The interaction between household demand for goods and for leisure and the supply of labor at various distances from an urban center is investigated for the case where rents are endogenous and adjust to equalize differences in utility produced by the greater time and money costs of the journey to shop and the journey to work. The model is solved for a set of realistic parameter values and this confirms that when rents are equal everywhere the demand for leisure can increase and the supply of labor decrease for households nearer the center, while once rents are endogenous the reverse must be true. For a household at a given location the elasticities of demand for goods and leisure and the elasticity of labor supply are calculated for all the parameters of the model. It is shown that the unavoidable costs of travel to work have strong effects on the rent gradient while the costs of the journey to shop have only weak effects, being offset by the variable frequency of shopping.     

The iron age in Mediterranean France: Colonial encounters, entanglements, and transformations

During the last seven centuries of the first millennium BC, the indigenous societies of Mediterranean France underwent a series of gradual social and cultural transformations that are linked in complex ways to their encounter and increasing entanglement with the broader Mediterranean world. This article presents a synthesis of current knowledge of this issue and explores some of the main themes guiding research. New evidence concerning the alien colonial agents (Etruscan, Greek, Punic/Iberian, and Roman), and the contrasting nature of their presence and power in the region, is discussed, as is evidence concerning forms of indigenous engagement with colonial states and paths of social and cultural change. The consumption of alien goods (wine, ceramics) and the adoption of foreign techniques and practices (ceramic production methods, coinage, writing) are examined in terms of the locally situated logic of demand and the ramifications for entanglement and change. Transformations in settlements, ritual spaces, funerary practices, and the agrarian landscape are discussed.     

ESTIMATING THE BENEFITS OF PUBLIC-HOUSING PROGRAMS: A CHARACTERISTICS APPROACH*

ABSTRACT. In this paper we specify a Stone-Geary utility function defined on housing attributes and other goods, empirically estimate the derived system of demand equations, and use the structural parameters to evaluate the benefits and consumption effects of a Belgian public rental housing program. By taking the composition of the bundle of housing attributes provided under the program into account, this study improves upon previous research which–with few exceptions–relies on a composite good, housing services.     

Optimizing the Spatial Structure of the Agricultural Production Function

Important characteristics of spatial agricultural production functions are derived by introducing a non‐negative curvilinear spatial demand function for production input intensities. Given the usual neoclassical rationale assumptions of spatial demand for capital and labor inputs under competitive environment of farming in developing agricultural economies, the optimal production levels are determined by optimizing spatial demand for production inputs. Decreasing price‐to‐transport costs ratio (that is, decrease in the prices of capital goods or increase in freight rates) and increasing wage‐to‐travel costs ratio (that is, increase in labor wages or decrease in the travel rate) expand the limits of the (spatial) optimal boundary of the demand for agricultural capital goods and labor input respectively. These effects occur on account of the operation of (positive) spatial price gradient and (negative) wage‐gradient in the market region. It may be noted that elasticities of demand for production factors are spatially variant and have significant effects on the alterations in the structure of agricultural production. However, the spatial optimal solution of production has a complicated relationship with them. The price elasticity has negative and wage elasticity has positive spatial gradients in the market region. Farmers located in the periphery of the market region are not much affected by the proportionate changes occurring in the prices of agricultural capital goods but are more sensitive to the proportional changes in labor wages. Because of a decreasing trend in capital input demand and increase in labor input with distance from the market, capital‐product diminishes with a decreasing rate and labor‐product increases with an increasing rate in the spatial structure of agricultural production. As a result, capital‐labor ratio falls toward zero, which raises profit rate per unit of capital investment especially in the outer part of the market region. The equilibria of optimal production with price elasticity as well as of capital intensity with labor employment (that is, capital‐labor ratio as unity) determine spatial limits of the optimal production zone which is shifted outward subject to the provision of cheap transportation, stabilizing market prices and/or increasing wage rate at the market center. It will help in extending outwardly the optimal spatial limits of capital investment and will mobilize capital resources of farmers in the periphery for efficient and competitive capital‐dominated farming.     

Sweet nationalism in bitter days: a commercial representation of Zionism

ABSTRACT. This article identifies several theoretical approaches to the role of culture in the construction of national identity. Embedded in the presently emerging approach, which emphasises the relations between popular culture/consumerism and national identity, this study focuses on a specific consumer good manufactured in Israel in the early 2000s, the height of the second Palestinian Intifada (uprising): small sugar packets bearing portraits of the patriarchs of Zionism. The analysis of this product, employing semiotic analysis, interviews and focus groups, locates it in the five ‘moments’ of du Gay's ‘circuit of culture’ (i.e. identity, representation, production, consumption and regulation). Three main gen e ral arguments were stated, empirically examined and largely sustained: (1) Consumer goods are used not only for constructing national identity but also as a means for ‘healing’ it; (2) in their ‘healing’ capacity, representations of nationalism on consumer goods do not add new elements to representations offered by the ‘high’ official version of nationalism but replicate them in a simplified way; (3) while trivialising the insights and concepts that originated in ‘high’ culture, consumer goods expose the prejudices, stereotypes and rules of inclusion and exclusion that in ‘high’ culture are often hidden in a sophisticated manner.     

Becoming modern: British-Indian discourses of arranged marriages

This article looks at the various ways in which arranged marriage is practised among members of the British-Indian population. It argues against a singular definition of this practice by highlighting the diversity of routes that lead to an arranged marriage. It also makes a case for understanding arranged marriage as a discursive practice which represents the British-Indian views on matchmaking and kinship. Drawing upon original empirical research conducted in the north-east of England, the article presents a ‘spectrum of arranged marriage’ practices that was prevalent among its practitioners. It highlights that the attraction of this institution lies in the elastic nature of the traditions associated with it. Finally, it proposes that the various discourses of arranged marriage are employed by British-Indians to interpret and tailor-make this traditional practice to carve out hyphenated identities such as British-Indian and other transnational forms of belonging. They achieve this by incorporating the demands of modernity such as the notion of romantic love and a certain level of individual choice within arranged marriage practices.     

山地旅游的非功用性体验研究——基于云南玉龙雪山游记的扎根理论分析

在旅游个性化、情感化、精神性消费渐成趋势背景下,具有丰富非功用性特质的山地旅游迎来发展新机遇.在提出山地旅游非功用性体验这一新概念的基础上,应用扎根理论分析方法对玉龙雪山案例地网络游记资料进行逐级编码,洞察山地旅游非功用性体验发展过程及实现方式等.研究表明:山地旅游非功用性体验是在山地旅游场的精神导引下、在情绪和情感的...