This project moves in three ways: continentally, to connect Made in Italy as a specific regional regime of national production and consumption, to the transformation of Europe in last third 20th century to become the  world standard for consumer democracy, replacing the U.S;  rising and then crashing under the European Union; globally, to explore the myriad interactions arising since the 1990s between Made in Italy and Made in China, and locally, in Italy, to explore transformations in craft, distribution, consumption, and standard of living related to the foregoing transformations.  

It elaborates on the concepts of “consumer regimes and “hyper-consumption” developed in the essays below.

It links back on my inveterate interest in gender and capitalism, dating back to the vintage, Sex of Things… (Read my Introduction or visit my Books page)

It will develop other cases like  the example of Ars Raffone, a Neapolitian typographer in the “Time of  Bill Gates.”

It picks up on earlier studies of the crisis of the U.S. Standard of Living  and the decline of the American Market Empire explored in Irresistible Empire (2005).

It builds on  histories of consumption and analyses of the Third Italy and Fast Fashion by Italian scholars from the 1990s, and on bourgeoning theoretical, political-economic, and historical studies on European capitalism, consumption, and inequality which will be the point of reference in course work and research from 2020 to 2023.

The Last Days of Print Culture

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Hyper-Consumerism

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