The chapter investigates the historical formation and the specific configuration of a crucial tripartite relation in contemporary society, that which happens between the body, the self and material culture. As we know, this relation in contemporary, late modern (or post-industrial) societies has come to be largely defined through consuming commodities increasingly symbolically elaborated by dedicated promotional organisations and sourced through circuits of commerce increasingly disembedded from local realities. This is itself a novelty, in that, especially for daily needs related to the maintenance of the body and for personal relations crucial to the stabilization of personal identity, the vast majority of the population in most historically given societies has relied on self-production, very short circuits of barter and servicing, and local circuits of commerce – all of which stressed the embeddedness of goods into relatively short, if often quite strict, networks of social relations. Drawing on historiography, sociology and anthropology, in the chapter shows how, from the early Modern period, the consolidation of new consumption patterns and values has given way to particular visions of the human being as a consumer, and the consumer in turn has come to work as a cultural battlefield for the management of both body and self.
Self and Body / R. Sassatelli - In: The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption / [a cura di] F. Trentmann. - Prima edizione. - Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2012. - ISBN 9780199561216. - pp. 633-652
Self and Body
R. SassatelliPrimo
2012
Abstract
The chapter investigates the historical formation and the specific configuration of a crucial tripartite relation in contemporary society, that which happens between the body, the self and material culture. As we know, this relation in contemporary, late modern (or post-industrial) societies has come to be largely defined through consuming commodities increasingly symbolically elaborated by dedicated promotional organisations and sourced through circuits of commerce increasingly disembedded from local realities. This is itself a novelty, in that, especially for daily needs related to the maintenance of the body and for personal relations crucial to the stabilization of personal identity, the vast majority of the population in most historically given societies has relied on self-production, very short circuits of barter and servicing, and local circuits of commerce – all of which stressed the embeddedness of goods into relatively short, if often quite strict, networks of social relations. Drawing on historiography, sociology and anthropology, in the chapter shows how, from the early Modern period, the consolidation of new consumption patterns and values has given way to particular visions of the human being as a consumer, and the consumer in turn has come to work as a cultural battlefield for the management of both body and self.File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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