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Modern life is full of stuff yet bereft of time. An economic
sociologist offers an ingenious explanation for why, over the past
seventy-five years, Americans have come to prefer consumption to
leisure. Productivity has increased steadily since the
mid-twentieth century, yet Americans today work roughly as much as
they did then: forty hours per week. We have witnessed, during this
same period, relentless growth in consumption. This pattern
represents a striking departure from the preceding century, when
working hours fell precipitously. It also contradicts standard
economic theory, which tells us that increasing consumption yields
diminishing marginal utility, and empirical research, which shows
that work is a significant source of discontent. So why do we
continue to trade our time for more stuff? Time for Things offers a
novel explanation for this puzzle. Stephen Rosenberg argues that,
during the twentieth century, workers began to construe consumer
goods as stores of potential free time to rationalize the exchange
of their labor for a wage. For example, when a worker exchanges his
labor for an automobile, he acquires a duration of free activity
that can be held in reserve, counterbalancing the unfree activity
represented by work. This understanding of commodities as
repositories of hypothetical utility was made possible, Rosenberg
suggests, by the standardization of durable consumer goods, as well
as warranties, brands, and product-testing, which assured wage
earners that the goods they purchased would be of consistent,
measurable quality. This theory clarifies perplexing aspects of
behavior under industrial capitalism—the urgency to spend
earnings on things, the preference to own rather than rent consumer
goods—as well as a variety of historical developments, including
the coincident rise of mass consumption and the legitimation of
wage labor.
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