Crap
Subtitle: A History of Cheap Stuff in America
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2020
Language: eng
Number of pages: 416
ISBN-13: 9780226664354
Description: "Wendy Woloson considers seriously the detritus of everyday consumerist Western lives--a category that comprises objects that function as art, jokes, tools, embodiments of fantasies, cultural signifiers, status symbols, and much more; a.k.a. "crap." She seeks to use these possessions to illuminate our society, culture, and economy. Why do we--as individuals and as a culture--have these things? Where do they come from, and why do we want them? In her words, this investigation "brings together material culture, consumer culture, behavioral economics, cultural economics, the histories of industrialization, capitalism and international trade, among other disciplines." Also, there's a Lightning Sausage"--