Class & the Culture of Consumption

Cultural historians, like other historians, are forever in search of transitional periods, moments when historical change occurs so dramatically that long-term developments are encapsulated in almost self-explanatory words and images. U.S. cultural historians locate one such period somewhere in the latter half of the nineteenth century when a “culture of abundance” (to use Warren Susman’s term) with new institutions (department stores, amusement parks, nightclubs, and hotels...