Buying Into the World of Goods

Early Consumers in Backcountry Virginia
Erscheinungsjahr 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8018-9826-6
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, 288 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 431 g

Reihe: Studies in Early American Economy and Society from the Library Company of Philadelphia

Cowinner, 2008 Fred Kniffen Book Award. Pioneer America Society/Association for the Preservation of Landscapes and Artifacts

How did people living on the early American frontier discover and then become a part of the market economy? How do their purchases and their choices revise our understanding of the market revolution and the emerging consumer ethos? Ann Smart Martin provides answers to these questions by examining the texture of trade on the edge of the upper Shenandoah Valley between 1760 and 1810.

Reconstructing the world of one country merchant, John Hook, Martin reveals how the acquisition of consumer goods created and validated a set of ideas about taste, fashion, and lifestyle in a particular place at a particular time. Her analysis of Hook's account ledger illuminates the everyday wants, transactions, and tensions recorded within and brings some of Hook's customers to life: a planter looking for just the right clock, a farmer in search of nails, a young woman and her friends out shopping on their own, and a slave woman choosing a looking glass.

This innovative approach melds fascinating narratives with sophisticated analysis of material culture to distill large abstract social and economic systems into intimate triangulations among merchants, customers, and objects. Martin finds that objects not only reflect culture, they are the means to create it.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Martin, Ann Smart

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftssektoren & Branchen Einzel- und Großhandel
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Series Editor's Foreword
Preface
Introduction: In Backcountry Time
1. The Business of Revolutions: John Hook and the Atlantic World
William Mead's Scottish Clock
2. Getting the Goods: Local Acquisition in a Tobacco Economy
The Iron Plate
3. Accounting for Life: Objects, Names, and Numbers
The Ledger
4. Living the Backcountry: Styles and Standards
The Wade Cabin in Backcountry Time
5. Setting the Stage, Playing the Part: Stores as Shopping Spaces
Ribbons of Desire
6. Suckey's Looking Glass: African Americans as Consumers
Mirrors and Meanings
Epilogue: Country Gentleman in a New Country: John Hook's Beef
Notes
Essay on Sources
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Martin, Ann Smart
Ann Smart Martin is Chipstone Professor and Director of the interdisciplinary Material Culture Program, Department of Art History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.