Blaszczyk, Regina Lee (Author)
This startlingly original and highly readable volume adds a new richness and depth to an element of U.S. history that is all too often taken for granted. Regina Lee Blaszczyk examines the emergence of consumerism in the Victorian era, and, in tracing its evolution over the next 140 years, shows how the emergence of a mass market was followed by its fragmentation. Niche marketing focused on successive waves of new consumers as each made its presence known: Irish immigrants, urban African Americans, teenagers, computer geeks, and soccer moms, to name but a few. Blaszczyk demonstrates that middle-class consumerism is an intrinsic part of American identity, but exactly how consumerism reflected that identity changed over time. Initially driven to imitate those who had already achieved success, Americans eventually began to use their purchases to express themselves. This led to a fundamental change in American culture one in which the American reverence for things was replaced by a passion for experiences. New Millennium families no longer treasured exquisite china or dress in fine clothes, but they ll spare no expense on being able to make phone calls, retrieve emails, watch ESPN, or visit websites at any place, any time. Victorian mothers just would not understand
...MoreReview Bronner, Simon J. (2012) Review of "American Consumer Society, 1865--2005: From Hearth to HDTV". Journal of Design History (p. 112).
Article
Jones, Steve;
(2001)
Day and night on the internet: The impact of a diffusing technology
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Article
Sims, Christo;
(2014)
Video Game Culture, Contentious Masculinities, and Reproducing Racialized Social Class Divisions in Middle School
(/isis/citation/CBB001450260/)
Book
Gary S. Cross;
Robert N. Proctor;
(2014)
Packaged Pleasures: How Technology and Marketing Revolutionized Desire
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Article
Sanneke Kloppenburg;
Irma van der Ploeg;
(2020)
Securing Identities: Biometric Technologies and the Enactment of Human Bodily Differences
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Book
Dunmur, David;
Sluckin, Tim;
(2010)
Soap, Science, and Flat-Screen TVs: A History of Liquid Crystals
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Article
Friedel, Robert;
(2014)
American Bottles: The Road to No Return
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Chapter
Oldenziel, Ruth;
(2007)
Technologie als Merkmal amerikanisch-bürgerlicher Männlichkeit, 1830--1978 (Technology as a feature of American bourgeois masculinity, 1830--1978).
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Article
Anna Jamieson;
(2021)
"Comforts in Her Calamity": Shopping and Consumption in the Late Eighteenth-Century Private Madhouse
(/isis/citation/CBB812067911/)
Article
Ganaway, Bryan;
(2008-9)
Engineers or Artists? Toys, Class and Technology in Wilhelmine Germany
(/isis/citation/CBB001032585/)
Book
Kristen Gallerneaux;
(2018)
High Static, Dead Lines: Sonic Spectres & the Object Hereafter
(/isis/citation/CBB213341622/)
Book
Pursell, Carroll W.;
(2005)
Companion to American technology
(/isis/citation/CBB001180187/)
Article
Jones, Steve;
Johnson-Yale, Camille;
Millermaier, Sarah;
Perez, Francisco Seoane;
(2009)
U. S. college students' internet use: Race, gender, and digital divides
(/isis/citation/CBB001181063/)
Book
Nelson, A. R.;
Rudolph, J. L.;
(2010)
Education and the culture of print in modern America
(/isis/citation/CBB001180015/)
Article
Philip Olson;
Christine Labuski;
(August 2018)
‘There’s always a [white] man in the loop’: The gendered and racialized politics of civilian drones
(/isis/citation/CBB568832607/)
Article
Dunbar-Hester, Christina;
(2010)
Beyond “Dudecore”? Challenging gendered and “raced” technologies through media activism
(/isis/citation/CBB001180355/)
Article
Hajdik, Anna;
(2014)
A “Bovine Glamour Girl”: Borden Milk, Elsie the Cow, and the Convergence of Technology, Animals, and Gender at the 1939 New York World's Fair
(/isis/citation/CBB001421771/)
Article
Oldenziel, Ruth;
Cooper, Patricia;
(1999)
Cherished classifications: Bathrooms and the construction of gender/race at the Pennsylvania railroad in World War II
(/isis/citation/CBB001181698/)
Article
Siefert, Marsha;
(1995)
Image/Music/Voice: Song dubbing in Hollywood musicals
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Book
Andrew R. Highsmith;
(2015)
Demolition Means Progress: Flint, Michigan, and the Fate of the American Metropolis
(/isis/citation/CBB918419848/)
Book
Garcilazo, Jeffrey Marcos;
(2012)
Traqueros: Mexican Railroad Workers in the United States, 1870--1930
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