Beyond Consumerism: New Historical Perspectives on Consumption

Beyond Consumerism: New Historical Perspectives on Consumption

If there is one agreement between theorists of modernity and those of post-modernity, it is about the centrality of consumption to modern capitalism and contemporary culture. To thinkers as different as Werner Sombart, Emile Durkheim and Thorstein Veblen at the turn of the twentieth century, consumption was a decisive force behind modern capitalism, its dynamism and social structure. More recen...

Historical Perspectives on Exotic

In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, California agriculture underwent a fundamental transformation as the state’s farmers shifted from the production of wheat to a rich variety of tree, vine, and row crops. This transformation required a wholesale shift in the production processes, with new farming practices, new labor systems, and new marketing structures. But success also req...

Grade retention: historical perspectives and new research.

Critical perspectives on historical collapse.

Historical collapse of ancient states or civilizations has raised new awareness about its possible relevance to current issues of sustainability, in the context of global change. This Special Feature examines 12 case studies of societies under stress, of which seven suffered severe transformation. Outcomes were complex and unpredictable. Five others overcame breakdown through environmental, pol...

Some historical perspectives on AACC.

During the mid-1960s, the clinical chemistry profession began to take on new substance and new directions as its significance in the general US healthcare system came more prominently into public view. In part, this was precipitated by concern about the at-times unscrupulous and unprofessional conduct of certain laboratories in their treatment of human specimens obtained as part of the diagnost...