Gender and Consumption: Domestic Cultures and the Commercialisation of Everyday Life - Hardcover

'This interdisciplinary and feminist collection of essays, offering historical and ethnographic insights into women's relationships to consumption, enlivens our understanding of the commercialization of domestic space and of women's lives. The writers in this volume give women's actual practices of consumption the scholarly attention they deserve.' Jennifer Scanlon, Bowdoin College, USA 'This fascinating and varied collection of multidisciplinary essays brings a much needed gendered perspective to the study of consumption, drawing on the feminist tradition of work on women's domestic practices as well as contributing to debates on consumer culture. The essays offer fresh, new and empirically grounded insights into the practice and meanings of consumption in everyday life.' Stevi Jackson, University of York, UK

Drawing upon anthropological, sociological and historical perspectives, this volume provides a unique insight into women’s domestic consumption. The contributors argue that domestic consumption represents an important lens through which to examine the everyday production and reproduction of socio-economic relations. Through a variety of case studies (such as gambling, wedding day consumption and bedroom décor), the essays explore and reconsider the nature of public and private spaces, and the subsequent nature of domestic space - often by challenging traditional notions of what constitutes ’the domestic’. The volume demonstrates the broad range of experiences that domestic consumption offers women and reveals some of the complex meanings and motivations underpinning women’s consumption practices.