Exaiming historical consumption is there a distinct historical geographic approach

Geography of Urbanisation


Emma Murphy

ID No. 2537143



Examining Historical consumption: Is there a distinct historic geographic approach?



Introduction


In approaching the topic of consumption, it is evident that many academic writers from a wide background of disciplines including historians, geographers and sociologists have contributed to the academic literature on late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century consumption. This essay will examine the literature surrounding early nineteenth century consumption, in order to ascertain what have been the significant contributions to consumption by geographers in comparison to the boarder context of consumption. It will argue that although geographers have brought new ideas and areas of research into the field of consumption, there has been an undue emphasis on department stores as ‘cathedrals of consumption’ (Crossick and Jaumain, 1999) to the point where there has been little research on othe...