Industrialization and Derign

在过去的二十年左右，我们见证了大量以消费和市场为中心主题的研究论文的发表。这些不仅是经济和社会历史学家的著作，更传统的政治历史学家、政治和经济思想历史学家以及文化历史学家都以关注消费为关键词，开创了新的研究领域。这些作品可以定位在一些更大的尝试中，以重写现代英国的历史，审视从传统社会的旧制度到现代商业社会，从传统美德到现代文明的转变。事实上，其中一些作者似乎已经改变了对历史的传统理解，并创造了一种新的范式。直到几十年前，经济史或多或少都集中在经济活动的生产方面。经济史家关注资本形成、经济增长、技术发明与创新、技术转移等问题，研究的主流是对产业结构的分析。然而，当人们考虑到经济发展的国际层面和物质复杂的交往时，生产/供应方面的历史已经证明自己不足以描述经济活动的动态，世界体系学派，由费尔南德·布罗代尔发起，由伊曼纽尔·沃勒斯坦等人发展，提出了世界经济紧密结合的网络理论，认为物质消费是经济增长的重要动力。

In the last twenty years or so we have witnessed the publication of a large number of studies featuring consumption and market as a central theme. These are not only works by economic and social historians, but more traditional political historians, historians of political and economic thought, and cultural historians as well have all pioneered the new terrain of research by focusing on consumption as their keyword. These works can be located within some of much larger attempts at rewriting the history of modern Britain that examine the transformation from the ancien regime of traditional society to modern commercial society, from traditional virtue to modern civility. Indeed some of these authors seem to have changed the traditional understanding of history and have created a new paradigm.Until a few decades ago economic history had more or less focused on the production side of economic activities. Economic historians were concerned with capital formation, economic growth, technological inventions and innovations, technological transfer and so on, and the main current of research had been the analysis of industrial structure.When one takes account of the international dimension of economic development and the intercourse of material complex, however, the production/supply side history has proved itself to be insufficient in describing the dynamics of economic activities, world-system school, originated by Fernand Braudel and developed by Immanuel Wallerstein etc., has developed a theory of closely knit network of world economy that has evolved the consumption of material goods as an important driving force of economic growth.