Buying Desire: History of Consumption

Catalog description

(cross-leveled with HIST 4865 ). This course explores the history of consumption practice in various cultural contexts. The course is divided into four parts: "Masses As Consumers", "Selling/Consuming Cultures", "Consumption as (Postcolonial) Modernity", and "Consumption and the Nation". Under each section are thematically related texts on particular cultural contexts. The reading of ethnographic texts on consumption is to be accompanied by critical discussions that locate consumption within the practices of the nation-state-making and global product-marketing. Graded on A-F basis only. Credit Hour s : 3