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| Material Type: | Internet resource |
|---|---|
| Document Type: | Book, Internet Resource |
| All Authors / Contributors: |
Lendol Glen Calder |
| ISBN: | 069105827X 9780691058276 |
| OCLC Number: | 39464979 |
| Notes: | Revision of author's thesis (doctoral)--University of Chicago, 1993. |
| Description: | xv, 377 p. : ill. ; 24 cm. |
| Contents: | Credit, consumer culture, and the American Dream -- Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society -- Debt in the Victorian money management ethic -- Small-loan lending and the rise of the personal finance company -- Hard Payments: the rise of installment selling -- From consumptive credit to consumer credit -- Consumer credit in the Great Depression. |
| Responsibility: | Lendol Calder. |
| More information: |
Abstract:
Calder presents the first book-length social and cultural history of the rise of consumer credit in America. He focuses on the years between 1890 and 1940, when the legal, institutional, and moral bases of today's consumer credit were established, and in an epilogue takes the story up to the present. He draws on a wide variety of sources - including personal diaries and letters, government and business records, newspapers, advertisements, movies, and the words of such figures as Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, and P.T. Barnum - to show that debt has always been with us. He vigorously challenges the idea that consumer credit has eroded traditional values. Instead, he argues, monthly payments have imposed strict, externally reinforced disciplines on consumers, making the culture of consumption less a playground for hedonists than an extension of what Max Weber called the "iron cage" of disciplined rationality and hard work.
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Related Subjects:(15)
- Consumer credit -- United States -- History.
- Consumption (Economics) -- United States -- History.
- Consumers -- United States -- History.
- Consumo (Economía) -- Historia -- Estados Unidos.
- Consumidores -- Estados Unidos -- Historia.
- Crédit à la consommation -- États-Unis -- Histoire.
- Consommation (Économie politique) -- États-Unis -- Histoire.
- Consommateurs -- États-Unis -- Histoire.
- Consumentenkrediet.
- Culturele aspecten.
- Konsumentenkredit.
- Verbraucherverhalten.
- Geschichte 1890-1940.
- Geschichte.
- USA.
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