HST3305: Worlds of Consumption
20 credits (semester 1)
Lecture Team: Dr. Daniel Scroop, Professor Phil Withington, Dr Karen Harvey, Dr Adrian Bingham and Dr James Shaw
| Comparative Option Description |
The Comparative Option is a 20-credit, one semester module at level 3. Comparative Options take major historical themes and explore these across a broad time-frame and in a variety of different cultural and geographic settings. Each comparative option is taught by a team of lecturers whose own research relates to aspects of the topic under discussion, and they are designed to involve students and the teaching staff in a dialogue about how we approach key questions in the study of past societies. The topics selected for the modules all represent areas of lively, current historiographical debate and offer opportunities to respond to interpretations and theories emerging in other disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, geography and political science. For this reason they will appeal especially to students with an interest in thinking across disciplines in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, including those studying for dual degrees. All of the comparative options raise issues with strong resonances in our contemporary culture.
Comparative Options have been created to complement the more specialised work at Level Three, looking beyond the detailed focus on one specific place and time to ask more conceptual questions and allow for the space to engage with significant themes that run across many of the periods that we tend to study in isolation. How can we compare historical experiences separated in time and space? Can we gain insights into understanding one period by knowing how similar challenges were met in a very different historical context? Do we learn more from what periods have in common, or from the differences that emerge?
The modules are taught through a series of lectures and ninety-minute seminars, placing an emphasis on collaborative learning and the encouragement of active student participation in researching and presenting material in class. The assessment for comparative options is a mixture of coursework and marks for oral performance in the seminars.
| Pre-requisites |
A pass in at least two history modules at level two.
| Module Summary |
Today we take it for granted that what we consume in some way defines who we are. Even the deliberate rejection of consumption—as practised for instance by advocates of voluntary simplicity—is regarded as a 'lifestyle choice'. We understand, too, that consumption is an intensely political topic connected to questions of identity, morality, status, and economic opportunity. How did it come to be so? This module explores this and related questions historically with the aim of illuminating the complexity and variety of consumption in the human past.
We tackle consumption in an array of historical settings: chronologically we cover the period from 1400 to the present day; geographically we explore case studies from the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia, studying consumption’s global and local, as well as its national, dimensions. Studying this unit will give you the chance to engage with the main themes arising from the historical study of consumption and will foster your ability and confidence in formulating analyses of a topic covering a significant period of time, approached in a comparative way, and studied at an advanced level.
| Teaching |
The module is taught through a combination of lectures and seminars. The lectures introduce the themes covered in the course and provide the necessary background and framework for exploring the subject. The 90-minute seminars provide opportunities for students to develop their ideas and discuss their reading for the module, and allow scope for students to gain experience in collaborative learning and in developing and articulating historical arguments.
| Lectures | Seminars | |
| Week 1 | Introducing consumption | - |
| Week 2 | Consumption in history | What is consumption? |
| Week 3 | From the Medieval to the modern | Approaches to consumption |
| Week 4 | Consumer revolutions | Shopping and ritual |
| Week 5 | Morals and the marketplace | Luxury and its critics |
| Week 6 | Empire and globalisation | The global and local |
| Week 7 | READING WEEK | - |
| Week 8 | Gender, class, and status | Presentations |
| Week 9 | Consumer movements | Identity by design |
| Week 10 | Modernity and mass consumption | The politics of consumption |
| Week 11 | Critiques and limits of consumption | - |
| Assessment |
The module is assessed by a combination of written coursework (83%) and marks for oral participation in seminars (17%). Students write two essays: an essay of 2000 words (33%) and one of 3000 words (50%).
Hand-in dates of the comparative option essays are as follows:
Essay 1: midday on Wednesday 14 Nov 2012 (week 8).
Essay 2: midday on Wednesday 16 Jan 2013 (week 13).
Assessment 1
Deadline for submission of hard and electronic copy: midday on Wednesday 14 Nov 2012 (week 8). The first essay should be 2,000 words long (the word count includes footnotes but not the bibliography). The word count should be declared on the cover sheet.
It is paramount that you hand-in your essay to the basket in person located on the ground floor in Jessop West.
Assessment 2
Deadline: midday on Wednesday 16 Jan 2013 (week 13).
Word limit: 3,000 words (including footnotes, not including bibliography)
This essay accounts for 50% of the mark for the module.
Format: Word-processed, with footnotes and bibliography, the separate sheets of paper stapled together. You only need one copy. A cover sheet for this assessment is provided on MOLE this should be printed out and completed with your registration number, the date of submission, the name of your seminar tutor and the essay title. It should then be attached to the front of your essay before submission. Your feedback will be returned to you (via your seminar tutor or the course coordinator) in the second semester so that you can benefit from the comments of the marker.
It is paramount that you hand-in your essay to the basket in person located on the ground floor in Jessop West.
| Selected Reading |
- Joyce Appleby, 'Consumption in Early Modern Social Thought' in in John Brewer & Roy Porter, Consumption and the World of Goods (Routledge, 1993)
- Maxine Berg and Elizabeth Eger (eds), Luxury in the Eighteenth Century (2002).
- Elizabeth Buettner, '"Going for an Indian": South Asian Restaurants and the Limits of Multiculturalism in Britain', Journal of Modern History, 80.4 (2008), pp. 865-901.
- John Brewer & Roy Porter (eds), Consumption and the World of Goods (1993).
- Martin Daunton & Matthew Hilton (eds.), The Politics of Consumption: Material Culture and Citizenship in Europe and America (2001).
- Lawrence Glickman, Buying Power: A History of Consumer Activism in America (2010).
- Matthew Hilton, 'The fable of the sheep; or private virtues, public vices: the consumer revolution of the twentieth century', Past and Present, 176 (2002), pp. 222-256.
- Lauro Martines, 'The Renaissance and the Birth of Consumer Society', Renaissance Quarterly 51, 1 (1998), 193-203
- Daniel Miller, 'Shopping as sacrifice', A Theory of Shopping (Polity Press/Cornell University, Cambridge, 1998), pp. 73-110.
- Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Context (1995).
