Credit, fashion, sex : economies of regard in Old Regime France / Clare Haru Crowston.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Crowston, Clare Haru, 1968-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Credit--France--History--17th century.

Credit.

Credit--France--History--18th century.

Fashion--France--History--17th century.

Fashion.

Fashion--France--History--18th century.

Sex--Economic aspects--France--History--17th century.

Sex.

Sex--Economic aspects--France--History--18th century.

Sex--Economic aspects.

History.

France.

Physical Description:

xvii, 424 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2013.

Summary:

In Old Regime France credit was both a central part of economic exchange and a crucial concept for explaining dynamics of influence and power in all spheres of life. Contemporaries used the term credit to describe reputation and the currency it provided in court politics, literary production, religion, and commerce. Moving beyond Pierre Bourdieu's theorization of capital, this book establishes credit as a key matrix through which French men and women perceived their world. As Clare Ham Crowston demonstrates, credit unveils the personal character of market transactions, the unequal yet reciprocal ties binding society, and the hidden mechanisms of political power. Credit economies constituted "economies of regard" in which reputation depended on embodied performances of credibility. Crowston explores the role of fashionable appearances and sexual desire in leveraging credit and reconstructs women's vigorous participation in its gray markets. The scandalous relationship between Queen Marie Antoinette and fashion merchant Rose Bertin epitomizes the vertical loyalties and deep social divides of the credit regime and-its increasingly urgent political stakes. Book jacket.

Contents:

Critiques and crises of the credit system

Incredible style : intertwined circuits of credit, fashion, and sex

Credit in the female fashion trades of eighteenth-century Paris

Fashion merchants: managing credit, narrating collapse

Madame Déficit and her minister of fashion : self-fashioning and the politics of credit

Family affairs : consumption, credit and the marriage bond.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780822355137

0822355132

9780822355281

0822355280

OCLC:

818953131