journal article
In Pursuit of Luxury: Global History and British Consumer Goods in the Eighteenth CenturyPast & Present
No. 182 [Feb., 2004]
, pp. 85-142 [58 pages]
Published By: Oxford University Press
//www.jstor.org/stable/3600806
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Tables of contents for recent issues of Past & Present are available at //www3.oup.co.uk/past/contents/. Authorized users may be able to access the full text articles at this site.Founded in 1952, Past & Present is widely acknowledged to be the liveliest and most stimulating historical journal in the English-speaking world. The journal offers: A wide variety of scholarly and original articles on historical, social and cultural change in all parts of the world. Four issues a year, each containing five or six major articles plus occasional debates and review essays. Challenging work by young historians as well as seminal articles by internationally regarded scholars. A range of articles that appeal to specialists and non-specialists, and communicate the results of the most recent historical research in a readable and lively form. A forum for debate, encouraging productive controversy. The examination of particular problems and periods as well as wider issues of historical change.
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Abstract
This study uses evidence from central Europe to address open questions about the Consumer and Industrious Revolutions. Did they happen outside the North Atlantic economies? Were they shaped by the “social capital” of traditional institutions? How were they affected by social constraints on women? It finds that people in central Europe did desire to increase market work and consumption. But elites used the social capital of traditional institutions to oppose new work and consumption practices, especially by women, migrants, and the poor. Although they seldom blocked new practices wholly, they delayed them, limited them socially, and increased their costs.
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