His and Hers: Gender, Consumption, and Technology / Edition 1

by Roger Horowitz, Arwen Mohun

Overview

The pathbreaking essays in this collection explore the history of consumption by synthesizing discrete historical literatures on consumer culture, gender, and the history of technology. Luxury hotels and the chocolate industry are among the diverse array of topics these authors use to demonstrate that consumption is both a material and a cultural process. Production and consumption become equally inextricable under close analysis. Tools from both the history of technology and gender studies illuminate how these categories intersect. Although broad social and technological trends influence the outcome of these stories, the authors emphasize the agaency of particular groups, including consumers, workers, manufacturers, and the "mediators" who communicate between producers and consumers. This volume will be of interest to historians in a wide range of fields.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813918020
Publisher:	University of Virginia Press
Publication date:	08/29/1998
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Roger Horowitz is Associate Director of the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware. He is the author of "Negro and White, Unite and Fight!" A Social History of Industrial Unionism in Meatpacking, 1930-1990. Arwen Mohun is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Delaware and the author of the forthcoming Close to Home: Gender and Technology in the British and American Steam Laundry Industries, 1880-1940.

What People are Saying About This

"His and Hers builds a foundation for the synthesis of two of the most exciting fields in scholarship today: cultural studies and the history of technology. Hayden White first helped open up the domain of cultural studies in history by arguing that ideas and images not only reflect culture, they serve to construct it. This book takes that idea a step further, systematically showing how culture gets inscribed into artifacts and how human intermediation and negotiation construct the meanings of objects and culture." -- Robert L. Frost, University of Michigan

Robert L. Frost

His and Hers builds a foundation for the synthesis of two of the most exciting fields in scholarship today: cultural studies and the history of technology. Hayden White first helped open up the domain of cultural studies in history by arguing that ideas and images not only reflect culture, they serve to construct it. This book takes that idea a step further, systematically showing how culture gets inscribed into artifacts and how human intermediation and negotiation construct the meanings of objects and culture.

Interviews

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Editorial Reviews

His and Hers builds a foundation for the synthesis of two of the most exciting fields in scholarship today: cultural studies and the history of technology. Hayden White first helped open up the domain of cultural studies in history by arguing that ideas and images not only reflect culture, they serve to construct it. This book takes that idea a step further, systematically showing how culture gets inscribed into artifacts and how human intermediation and negotiation construct the meanings of objects and culture.

Robert L. Frost

"His and Hers builds a foundation for the synthesis of two of the most exciting fields in scholarship today: cultural studies and the history of technology. Hayden White first helped open up the domain of cultural studies in history by arguing that ideas and images not only reflect culture, they serve to construct it. This book takes that idea a step further, systematically showing how culture gets inscribed into artifacts and how human intermediation and negotiation construct the meanings of objects and culture. "—Robert L. Frost, University of Michigan

From the Publisher

[An] excellent biography... [Jackson] was appalled by the prospect of details about his 'personal history' being published after his death, and forbade Horowitz—whom he appointed as his literary executor—from writing or releasing such material. Horowitz ignored Jackson’s proscription, however. Her necessarily incomplete account of his life—structured in the form of nine intersecting essays—is by turns loving and anguished, admiring and angry.

New York Review of Books

Eight contributions explore the history of consumption by synthesizing literature on consumer culture, gender, and the history of technology. Topics include the culture of the American luxury hotel, gender and the American candy industry, gender and energy marketing in the early 20th century, the reconfiguration of community marketplaces in postwar America, and a parable involving gender, design, the market, and the search for a good stove. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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