History and the Study of Consumerism: A Historian of the West Looks to Japan

  • Beverly Lemire
Chapter

Abstract

For generations, histories of the West were infused with assumptions of that region’s exceptionalism — exceptionalism in culture, politics and economy. This powerful underlying narrative shaped analyses and directed research, while many unwarrantable claims remained untested for generations. As a hypothesis, it was a by-product of the unprecedented imperial expansion of Western powers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, along with exceptional industrial growth, both concurrent with the expansion of the Western academy. Disciplines such as history developed within this political milieu. And academics commonly echoed the dominant discourses of their age.

Keywords

Cotton Textile Eighteenth Century Consumer Society Global History Consumer Practice 
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Copyright information

© Beverly Lemire 2012

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  • Beverly Lemire

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