Consumers' imperium : the global production of American domesticity, 1865-1920 / Kristin L. Hoganson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hoganson, Kristin L.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Consumption (Economics)--Social aspects--United States--History.

Consumption (Economics).

Consumer behavior--United States--History.

Consumer behavior.

Social change--United States--History.

Social change.

Lifestyles--United States--History.

Lifestyles.

Cosmopolitanism--United States.

Cosmopolitanism.

History.

Consumption (Economics)--Social aspects.

United States.

Physical Description:

xiv, 402 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2007]

Summary:

Histories of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era tend to characterize the United States as an expansionist nation bent on Americanizing the world without being transformed itself. In Consumers' Imperium, Kristin Hoganson reveals the other half of the story, demonstrating that the years between the Civil War and World War I were marked by heightened consumption of imports and strenuous efforts to appear cosmopolitan.

Hoganson finds evidence of international connections in quintessentially domestic places-American households. She shows that well-to-do white women in this era expressed intense interest in other cultures through imported household objects, fashion, cooking, entertaining, armchair travel clubs, and the immigrant gifts movement. From curtains to clothing, from around-the-world parties to arts and crafts of the homelands exhibits, Hoganson presents a new perspective on the United States in the world by shifting attention from exports to imports, from production to consumption, and from men to women. She makes it clear that globalization did not just happen beyond America's shores, as a result of American military might and industrial power, but that it happened at home, thanks to imports, immigrants, geographical knowledge, and consumer preferences. Here is an international history that begins at home.

Contents:

Beyond Main Street : imperial nightmares and gopher prairie yearnings

Cosmopolitan domesticity, imperial accessories : importing the American dream

The fashionable world : imagined communities of dress

Entertaining difference : popular geography in various guises

Girdling the globe : the fictive travel movement and the rise of the tourist mentality

Immigrant gifts, American appropriations : Progressive Era pluralism as imperialist nostalgia

Conclusion: The global production of American domesticity

Appendix of travel clubs.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 341-388) and index.

ISBN:

9780807830895

0807830895

9780807857939

0807857939

OCLC:

77572757