"Commodification" refers most explicitly to the activities of turning things into commodities and of commercializing that which is not commercial in essence. The mass marketing of pets, the rise of the coffin industry, the conversion of preacher into salesmen, and the globalization of Taleggio cheese are some of the exciting but surprising topics in this volume that show how friendship, death, spirituality, and artisanship all have a price after being commodified.
This unique collection of essays is a fascinating take on creating consumer products and consumer identities when what's for sale goes well beyond the thing itself. It will be a course-in-a-box for instructors who want to teach their students about commodification.

"Commodification" refers most explicitly to the activities of turning things into commodities and of commercialising that which is not commercial in essence. The mass marketing of pets, the rise of the coffin industry, the conversion of preacher into salesmen, and the globalization of Taleggio cheese are some of the exciting but surprising topics in this volume that show how friendship, death, spirituality, and artisanship all have a price after being commodified.
This unique collection of essays is a fascinating take on creating consumer products and consumer identities when what's for sale goes well beyond the thing itself. It will be a course-in-a-box for instructors who want to teach their students about commodification.

The history of consumption is a prism through which many aspects of social and political life may be viewed. The essays in this collection represent a variety of approaches and raise such themes as consumption and democracy, the development of a global economy, the role of the state, the centrality of consumption to Cold War politics, the importance of the Second World War as a historical divide, the language of consumption, the contexts of locality, race, ethnicity, gender, and class, and the environmental consequences of twentieth-century consumer society. They explore the role of the historian as social, political, and moral critic. Unlike other studies of twentieth-century consumption, this book provides international comparisons.

During the twentieth century sound underwent a dramatic transformation as new technologies and social practices challenged conventional aural experience. As a result, sound functioned as a means to exert social, cultural, and political power in unprecedented and unexpected ways. The fleeting nature of sound has long made it a difficult topic for historical study, but innovative scholars have recently begun to analyze the sonic traces of the past using innovative approaches. "Sound in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" investigates sound as part of the social construction of historical experience and as an element of the sensory relationship people have to the world, showing how hearing and listening can inform people's feelings, ideas, decisions, and actions.The essays in "Sound in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" uncover the varying dimensions of sound in twentieth-century history. Together they connect a host of disparate concerns, from issues of gender and technology to contests over intellectual property and government regulation. Topics covered range from debates over listening practices and good citizenship in the 1930s, to Tokyo Rose and Axis radio propaganda during World War II, to CB-radio culture on the freeways of Los Angeles in the 1970s. These and other studies reveal the contingent nature of aural experience and demonstrate how a better grasp of the culture of sound can enhance our understanding of the past.

The degree to which shopping, or, more broadly, consumerism, is both critiqued and defended in American society confirms the role that commercial goods play in our daily lives. This collection of essays provides case studies depicting selected aspects of this engaging activity. The authors include several historians with diverging specialties: an art historian, an anthropologist, an environmental journalist, a geographer and urban planner, and practicing artists. Each author demonstrates how a material culture perspective—a focus on the relationship between people and their things—can illuminate a specific corner of consumption. Connecting the essays are concerns about the spaces in which shopping occurs; about the experience of shopping itself, both individual and social; and about its economic, environmental, and personal downsides. Collectively, these essays demonstrate how a material culture perspective on shopping yields insights into multiple aspects of American culture. Published by University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.  

Women reformers in the United States and Germany maintained a brisk dialogue between 1885 and 1933. Drawing on one another's expertise, they sought to alleviate a wide array of social injustices generated by industrial capitalism, such as child labor and the exploitation of women in the workplace. This book presents and interprets documents from that exchange, most previously unknown to historians, which show how these interactions reflected the political cultures of the two nations.

On both sides of the Atlantic, women reformers pursued social justice strategies. The documents discussed here reveal the influence of German factory legislation on debates in the United States, point out the differing contexts of the suffrage movement, compare pacifist and antipacifist reactions of women to World War I, and trace shifts in the feminist movements of both countries after the war.

Social Justice Feminists in the United States and Germany provides insight into the efforts of American and German women over half a century of profound social change. Through their dialogue, these women explicate their larger political cultures and the place they occupied in them.