Do it yourself. A different history of the consumer age

自己做。

• 批准号: 450068392
• 负责人: Professorin Dr. Reinhild Kreis
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Historisches Seminar
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Publication Grants
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2019-12-31 至 2020-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/450068392?language=en
• 关键词: Do; yourself.; different; history; consumer

Most citizens of modern consumer societies are prosumers, presumably without thinking about it. They buy baking ingredients, electric drills, or hair color, and turn them into cakes, furniture, and hairstyles. By combining purchased items with their own labor, they are both consumers and producers. This invisible economy in the grey area between production and consumption rose together with modern consumer society when people increasingly had the opportunity to chose between purchasing ready-made items on the market, household production, and the many options in between. Despite its enormous impact the interaction between production and consumption in private households has received little scholarly attention.“Make or buy”-decisions and the many options in between never were (just) a private matter. Decisions about modes of provision transport ideas about identities and about the employment of resources such as time, money, and materials. How households provisioned themselves was therefore always of interest for politicians, industry, and scholars. My book investigates the period from the 1880s to the 1980s. It analyzes (1) attempts to intervene in modes of provision of private households such as the introduction of manual training and home economics in school curricula, the ideal of the “good housewife”, bans on home slaughtering during the World Wars, government-driven programs to increase home improvement activities in the GDR, and not least the economic interests of branches such as the home improvement or food industries. On a more practical level, the book (2) looks into practices of making things oneself: What did households produce at home, how, and for which reasons? How were tasks divided along the lines of gender, class, and generation? How important were thriftiness, fun, and quality awareness? What was considered work or leisure?In my book, I call into question the powerful dichotomies of production and consumption, work and leisure which systematically ignore all activities that do not fit into these coordinates. As the first scholarly and historical analysis of the discourses and practices around household production, the book reveals the development of a highly dynamic and graded repertoire of practices and products which created a multitude of options between make and buy. By explaining how such discourses and practices shaped social and economic order, the book offers a new interpretation of high modernity.Practices of making things oneself, the book argues, served as important regulative in modern societies, as they helped balancing out production and consumption, work and leisure with regard to gender, class, and generation. I show household production as a huge market and as a moral economy in which questions of provision were closely intertwined with ideas about right or wrong actions, identities, and role models, in short: to which degree social and economic orders were shaped by decisions about “make or buy?”

现代消费社会的大多数公民都是消费者，想必没有想过这一点。他们购买烘焙材料、电钻或染发剂，然后把它们变成蛋糕、家具和发型。通过将购买的物品与自己的劳动结合起来，他们既是消费者又是生产者。这种处于生产和消费之间灰色地带的无形经济与现代消费社会一起兴起，当时人们越来越多地有机会在市场上购买成衣、家庭生产和介于两者之间的许多选择之间进行选择。尽管影响巨大，但私人家庭的生产和消费之间的相互作用几乎没有受到学术界的关注。“做还是买”--决策和介于两者之间的许多选择从来都不是(仅仅)私人问题。关于提供方式的决定传达了关于身份和资源使用(如时间、金钱和材料)的想法。因此，家庭如何自给自足一直是政治家、工业界和学者感兴趣的问题。我的书调查了从19世纪80年代到80年代的时期。它分析了(1)试图干预私人家庭的提供模式，例如在学校课程中引入手工培训和家政，“好家庭主妇”的理想，在二战期间禁止家庭屠宰，政府主导的增加民主德国家居改善活动的计划，以及尤其是家居装修或食品业等部门的经济利益。在更实际的层面上，这本书(2)探讨了自己制作东西的实践：家庭在家里生产什么，如何生产，以及出于什么原因？任务是如何按性别、阶级和代际划分的？节俭、趣味和质量意识有多重要？什么是工作或休闲？在我的书中，我对生产和消费、工作和休闲的强大二分法提出了质疑，这些二分法系统性地忽视了所有不符合这些坐标的活动。作为第一个围绕家庭生产的话语和实践的学术和历史分析，该书揭示了高度动态和分级的实践和产品曲目的发展，创造了制造和购买之间的多种选择。通过解释这些话语和实践如何塑造社会和经济秩序，这本书对高度现代性提供了一种新的解释。书中认为，自制的实践在现代社会起到了重要的调节作用，因为它们有助于在性别、阶级和代际之间平衡生产与消费、工作和休闲。我认为家庭生产是一个巨大的市场，是一种道德经济，在这种经济中，供应问题与关于正确或错误的行为、身份和榜样的想法紧密交织在一起，简而言之：社会和经济秩序在多大程度上受到关于“制造或购买”的决定的影响？