Home and Family

The chapter analyses some of the most important themes which have emerged in recent historiographical debates on home and family consumption. In particular, I will focus attention on the crucial historical phase at the heart of this book: the age of revolutions and empires. The first part examines the wide-ranging debate around the emergence of a new taste for the home and home furnishing in the nineteenth century, linked to the domesticity ideology elaborated most notably by the European and American middle classes. The second section will analyse studies specifically focusing on household shopping and the transformations which affected the household furniture and furnishings consumer sphere. In this section we will look in particular at the way in which the intersection between the history of material culture and women’s and gender history has contributed to highlighting the nexus between household consumption and thus exalting the ‘productive’ dimension of domestic consumption. In the third part, the article explores the relationship between domesticity, empire building processes, and the birth of a global consumer economy.