Culture In History
Production, Consumption and Values in Historical Perspective

This volume of interdisciplinary essays brings together leading academics from the fields of history, economic history, politics and sociology to review and take forward a series of debates on the role of culture in social explanation. The book is aimed at those involved in cultural studies, but is particularly concerned with the relationship between the economic and the cultural. The contributors suggest that the boundaries of production and consumption are themselves cultural constructs, formed by changing conceptions of economic and cultural explanation, but offer very different approaches to resolving the problems created by this.

 Part 1 The problem of culture: momentum and history, Stephen Mennell; prices as descriptions - reasons as explanations, Iain Hampsher-Monk. Part 2 Production and culture: culture, environment and the historical lag in Asia's industrialization, Eric L. Jones; cultural values and entrepreneurial action - the case of the Irish Republic, Paul Keating; employers, workplace culture and workers' politics, British industry and workers' welfare programmes, 1870-1920, Joseph Melling; cultural influences on economic action, Sidney Pollard. Part 3 Consumption and culture: excess, frugality and the spirit of Capitalism - readings of mandeville on commercial society, Dario Castiglione; addicted to modernity - nervousness in the early consumer society, Roy Porter; bourgeois production and realist styles of art, Robert Witkin; setting up the seen, Philip Corrigan.