International workshop - Cultures of Consumption 1500-1800: Products, Desire and Imagination

In our contemporary world, consumers are bombarded daily with advertisements to buy products. Most advertisements in modern media are not limited to the utility of the product as their main selling point.  They instead sell the fantasy that the consumer’s life is elevated by buying the advertised product. Consumption cannot solely be defined as the opposite of production, and is instead an autonomous force, intrinsically tied to the imagination and identity of the consumer. How consumerism and consumer culture emerged has been a fruitful topic of debate in recent scholarship on the rise of consumer society in Europe. Scholars like David Graeber have challenged the definition of consumption as the opposing force to production, while steering towards a more critical analysis of consumption that also involves the link between consumption and cultural imagination.

In the critical analysis of the origins of consumption and consumer culture, such as Graeber’s, much scholarly attention has been paid to early modernity. In early usages of the word in French and English starting from the fourteenth century consumption was linked to disease and the wasting of material goods. The desires and fears of early modern people concerning consumption and objects of desire were explored and portrayed in art, theatre and science. These desires and anxieties were rooted in class, gender and colonial relations. ‘Cultures of consumption’ therefore is defined broadly within this workshop. We are particularly focused, however, on the aspect of cultural imagination and the ways in which this imagination engages with the desire to purchase and possess products.

We invite researchers to reflect on this dimension of imagination and its interaction with the affective aspects of consumption from a variety of media perspectives. This may include insights drawn from the study of literature, theatre, visual art, and early examples of advertising. A range of academic disciplines can be brought to bear on this topic, including cultural history, history of emotions/affect studies, theatre studies, socio-economic history, philosophy, and material studies. This international workshop at Ghent University aims to bring the many divergent approaches to the history of consumption and desire together.

• The workshop will feature lectures by Daniel Fulda (Delights beyond Virtue: Consumer Ethics in the German Enlightenment’s Comedy) and Inger Leemans (The Sweet Smell of Desire: How the Dutch Created an Affective Economy for Fragrance Consumption)
• Programme

There are still a few places available for colleagues who would like to participate in the discussions. If you are interested, please register by 9 January by sending an email to Estel.vandenBerg@UGent.be or Cornelis.vanderHaven@UGent.be.

This workshop is part of the FWO research project Displays of Desire  at UGent and ULB, and is organised in cooperation with Thalia and GEMS (Estel van den Berg, Kornee van der Haven and Karel Vanhaesebrouck).

^{_{Photo credit : Markt op het Buitenhof. Anoniem, naar een tekening van Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne (1635). Rijksmuseum Amsterdam}}