To an extent Britain’s post-war years could be described as affluent. Consumption patterns in the mid twentieth century included the emergence of new household goods as well as the popular dominance of the motor car. Amongst modernisation the term of ‘teenager’ emerged as one of Britain’s main consumers. Leisure patterns embraced the contemporary appliances such as the dominance of television, the choice of cinema showings as well as the effect of Americanisation. Consumerism fever invaded all sectors of society as more and more people had better paid jobs and more free time. However in describing Britain’s post-war society it is important how we define the terms. Consumption is how the British people absorbed the modern possessions of the household and how they influenced their free time. Consumption also includes how modern trappings affected peoples lives. Leisure patterns describe what seized the attention of the public as a whole and that most of the population had more time to spend as they wished. Affluence describes the prosperity of society and how they have a great deal of wealth. Although Britain did prosper during the post war period, it is inaccurate to describe British society as affluent.
Hugh Pemberton argues ‘the second world war brought a marked upswing in economic growth’1 and to some extent he is right. Consumer levels of the 1950s and 1960s certainly contributed to Britain becoming a more affluent society. The majority of the english society could now enjoy a consumerism lifestyle which included modern conveniences for the household as well as the widespread appeal of the motorcar and motorcycle. Consumption and leisure patterns can be described as undergoing under ‘revolutionary period’ as previous unthink...
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...orary Britain p.37613 *book* youth culture by bill osgerby in a companion to contemporary britain pp.128-12914 -http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6684281.stm15 -http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6684281.stm16 Peter Clarke Hope and Glory Britain p25317 *book* the rise and disintegration of the working class by Robert Taylor in a companion to contemporary Britain p.37718 Peter clarke Hope and Glory: Britain 1900-2000 p.25019 *book* sport and recreation by richard holt in a companion to contemporary britain p.11220 *book* living standards and consumption by Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska in a companion to contemporary britain p.23221 book* living standards and consumption by Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska in a companion to contemporary britain p.23322 book* living standards and consumption by Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska in a companion to contemporary britain p.240
Waites B.A. "The Effect of the First World War on Class and Status in England, 1910-20," Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 11, No. 1. (Jan., 1976), pg. 34.
Many individuals would define leisure as time free from paid work, domestic responsibilities, and just about anything that one would not do as part of their daily routine. Time for leisure and time for work are both two separate spheres. The activities which people choose to do on their spare time benefit their own personal interests as well as their satisfactions. While some people may enjoy one activity, others pay not. Leisure is all about personal interests and what people constitute having a good time is all about. Some may say that the process of working class leisure can be seen to contribute their own subordination as well as the reproduction of capitalist class relations. Self-produced patterns of working class leisure can lead to resistance to such reproduction. This leads to social class relations and inequalities, and the fact that it they can never be completely reproduced in the leisure sphere. This film Home Feeling: Struggle for a Community, gives some examples of the role of leisure within a capitalist society dealing with issues such as class inequalities, and how they are different among various societies.
Evidence suggests that families often enjoyed everyday leisure but in reality working class social life was divided by gender. Married women’s leisure tended to be separate from the public domain and was not very different from work, but was linked with domestic duties and family relations. It was during this period that to survive families had to send their sons and daughters into the labor force to supplement the earnings of the father, while the mother cooked, cleaned, cared for the children and manufactured goods in the home. The typical wage-earning woman of 1900 was young and single.
During the post WWII period in America, the face of the nation changed greatly under the presidency of Truman and Eisenhower. America underwent another era of good feelings as they thought themselves undefeatable and superior over the rest of the world. Communism was the American enemy and American sought to rid the world of it. Because of the extreme paranoia caused by Communism, conformity became an ideal way to distinguish American Culture from the rest. Conformity became a part of every American Life to a large extent. It became evident through the medium of culture, society and politics throughout the era of the 50s.
Calder’s Thesis for this book follows the development of American consumer culture from its unorganized infancy around the 1890’s to about the 1940’s. There are several references to credit and debt outside this range as a reference to where we started and w...
The 1950s seemed like a perfect decade. The rise of suburbs outside cities led to an expansion of the middle class, thus allowing more Americans to enjoy the luxuries of life. The rise of these suburbs also allowed the middle class to buy houses with land that used to only be owned by more wealthy inhabitants. Towns like Levittown-one of the first suburbs- were divided in such a way that every house looked the same (“Family Structures”). Any imperfections were looked upon as unfavorable to the community as a whole. Due to these values, people today think of the 1950s as a clean cut and model decade. This is a simplistic perception because underneath the surface, events that took place outside the United States actually had a direct effect on our own country’s history. The rise of Communism in Russia struck fear into the hearts of the American people because it seemed to challenge their supposedly superior way of life.
On the heels of war, new technology caused a decrease in prices of goods in the 1920’s and in the 1950’s the GI Bill increased income. The bureaucratization of business in the 1920’s meant that more people could be employed in higher paying white-collar jobs than before, including, for the first time, housewives. This new income combined with the reduced prices for goods that resulted from mechanized production, assembly lines and a general decrease of the cost of technology created a thriving consumerist middle class that went on to fuel the economy in all sectors, especially the upper classes. Likewise, during World War II Americans saved up around 150 billion dollars, and this sum combined with the income of the GI Bill allowed normal people to buy expensive things, from houses to cars to electronics to educations at a rapid rate, fueling the trademark prosperity of the 1950’s. The new automobile culture of the 50’s spawned new businesses that catered to mobile Americans, such as nicer and more standardized hotels like Holiday Inn, and drive-up restaurants like McDonalds. Just as the culture of the 1920’s was transfo...
In 1899 Thorstein Veblen wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions. In this work, Veblen presented critical thinking that pertains to people’s habits and their related social norms. He explores the way certain people disregard the divisions that exist within the social system, while subsequently emulating certain aspects of the leisure class in an effort to present an image of higher social status. He also presented the theory of conspicuous consumption, which refers to an instance when a person can fulfill their needs by purchasing a product at a lower cost that is equal in quality and function to its more expensive counterpart; however, said person chooses to buy the more expensive product, by doing so, they are attempting to present an image of a higher social status. The almost 110 year cycle between 1899 and 2010 reveals few differences in buying behaviors, other than the differing selection of luxury goods to indulge, or over-indulge in.
The 80’s were a decade of great change. It became obvious that there was a widening between the classes. The middle class was disappearing and people took different approaches to dealing with this fact. One way of life that became synonymous with the 80’s was being a young, urban professional, or what people at the time coined a Yuppie. Due to the widening wealth gap, it became essential to market products as either upscale and downscale. Producers were forced to place their items in one frame of reference of the other, fancy of frugal. To sell items with the high price tag advertisers played on the yuppie habit of compensatory spending. Yuppies did not want to be confused with low class or middle class, so they spent in order to show their status to the world (Ehrenreich, 229).
Since the war in Britain the most recurrent types of moral panic has been associated with the emergence of various form of youth (originally almost exclusively working class, but often recently middle class or student based) whose behaviour is deviant or delinquent. To a greater or lesser degree, these cultures have been associated with violence. The Teddy Boys, the Mods and Rockers, the Hells Angels, the skinheads and the hippies have all been phenomena of this kind (Cohen, 2002). Youth appeared as an emergent category in post-war Britain, on one of the most striking and visible manifestations of social changes in the period. Youth...
During the Golden Age of Capitalism in America even the President enjoyed some leisure time. At the end of WWII the standards of living was up, unemployment was low and the American GNP more than doubled. The population boomed leading suburban living to become the norm. Jack Straus, the chairman of the board of Macy’s, declared “Our ability to consume is endless. The luxuries of today are the necessities of tomorrow.” This became the thinking of the time. Citizens lavished in the new life style of ease that a growing economy could now provide for the average, working, middle class person.
In her article Cooper focuses on post-war austerity focusing on food rations and aims to take the perspective of a housewife and how austerity caused ‘the trials and tribulations of the British Housewife’ (Cooper, 1964, p.35), however she does not always succeed in this endeavour. Cooper notes that ‘by 1948 rations had fallen well below the wartime average’ (Cooper, 1964, p.38), she argues that these effects could be felt by housewives even two years prior, as in 1946 the dried egg, which was a product of austerity, was taken off the shelves because of problems with the ‘post war American loan’ (Cooper, 1964, p.38). The result of this was a public consensus that they would rather face cuts in film, tobacco, fruit or milk in order to keep the
For several decades, as if, a typical undergraduate dream has been characterized with few major steps – getting prestigious high education, taking or buying a diploma, and consequently becoming a successful rich careerist with intuitively main goal to consume as much as possible in order to boost one’s utility at highest potential level. In this way of thinking, development of personal individualism and pursue of human values are left behind the curtains. Everything that can be seen on the scene of our being is mass consumerism, which slowly, gradually, but surely is transferring us into a hedonistic consumer society. According to an article in European Journal of Marketing, “A consumer society is defined as one directed largely by the accumulation and consumption of material goods. The term "consumer society" is used in a pejorative sense, coming from the perception that such a society will inevitably be hedonistic. It is the search for instant gratification that we traditionally associate with hedonism….”(41 Issue: 2007). In our way to gain deep pleasure, we are over purchasing items and gadgets which once were thought to be extreme luxuries. Most of the times, we are interested in what kind of IPhone we possess, whether to buy a tablet or a laptop, are we are driving more expensive and fancy car than the others, what is more fashionable – a pair of Armani jeans or a pair of Dolce and Cabaña trousers.
According to Alyson Dickerman of Ouachita Baptist University, consumerism “is as old as the first civilizations.” People have been buying goods and materials beyond their basic needs since the days of Ancient Rome. However, a great boom occurred during the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, producing new products that citizens sought to obtain. New methods of mass production overtook factories, increasing efficiency and output while simultaneously decreasing the cost to manufacture. Lower prices and higher availability meant almost anyone could purchase these items, such as Henry Ford’s Model T automobile and refrigerators. The era of consumerism had begun.
As compared to us today, my parents never had TV, video, computers and jet planes. Their lives are not cluttered with so many consumer goods that we find today in supermarkets and shopping complexes. For that matter, they never had supermarkets nor complexes. They did their occasional shopping in simple shops, devoid of air-conditioning or price-tags.