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Capitalism and the Senses is the first edited volume to explore how the forces of capitalism are entangled with everyday sensory experience. If the senses have a history, as Karl Marx wrote, then that history is inseparable from the development of capitalism, which has both taken advantage of the senses and influenced how sensory experience has changed over time.
This pioneering collection shows how seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching have both shaped and been shaped by commercial interests from the turn of the twentieth century to our own time. From the manipulation of taste and texture in the food industry to the careful engineering of the feel of artificial fabrics, capitalist enterprises have worked to commodify the senses in a wide variety of ways. Drawing on history, anthropology, geography, and other fields, the volume’s essays analyze not only where this effort has succeeded but also where the senses have resisted control and the logic of markets. The result is an innovative ensemble that demonstrates how the drive to exploit sensorial experience for profit became a defining feature of capitalist modernity and establishes the senses as an important dimension of the history of capitalism.
Contributors: Nicholas Anderman, Regina Lee Blaszczyk, Jessica P. Clark, Ai Hisano, Lisa Jacobson, Sven Kube, Grace Lees-Maffei, Ingemar Pettersson, David Suisman, Ana María Ulloa, Nicole Welk-Joerger.
[W]ell-researched and very thought provoking...[T]he value of the essays in Capitalism and the
Senses lies partly in their informative historical narratives but, more importantly, in their capacity to make readers think in new ways about marketing and consumption, past and present. The commercialization of taste, sound, smell, and touch has had consequences for consumer culture and for society at large. The marketing of the senses, and how these practices intersect with gender, class, and race, or affect human and natural environments, should provide ample opportunities for further macromarketing research.
Regina Lee Blaszczyk is Professor of Business History and Leadership Chair in the History of Business and Society at the University of Leeds.
David Suisman is Associate Professor of History at the University of Delaware.
Series Editor’s Foreword
Roger Horowitz
Introduction
Regina Lee Blaszczyk and David Suisman
Part I. Framing Capitalism and the Senses
Chapter 1. “Use Not Perfumery to Flavor Soup”: The Science of the Senses in Aesthetic Capitalism
Ai Hisano
Chapter 2. Chasing Flavor: Sensory Science and the Economy
Ingemar Pettersson
Chapter 3. Richer Sounds: Capitalism, Musical Instruments, and the Cold War Sonic Divide
Sven Kube
Part II. Resisting Rationalization
Chapter 4. Altered States and Gustatory Taste: The Sensory Synergies of Whiskey Marketing in the Mid-Twentieth-Century United States
Lisa Jacobson
Chapter 5. The Psychophysics of Taste and Smell: From Experimental Science to Commercial Tool
Ana María Ulloa
Chapter 6. Sky’s the Limit: Capitalism, the Senses, and the Failure of Commercial Supersonic Aviation in the United States
David Suisman
Chapter 7. Sounding Maritime Metal: On Weathering Steel and Listening to Capitalism at Sea
Nicholas Anderman
Part III. Production
Chapter 8. Making Human Trash Tasty: A History of Sweet Cattle Feed in the Progressive Era
Nicole Welk-Joerger
Chapter 9. Getting a Handle on It: Thomas Lamb, Mass Production, and Touch in Design History
Grace Lees-Maffei
Part IV. Marketplace
Chapter 10. Fragrance and Fair Women: Perfumers and Consumers in Modern London
Jessica P. Clark
Chapter 11. Sold on Softness: DuPont Synthetics and Sensory Experience
Regina Lee Blaszczyk
Chapter 12. Feminine Touches: The Sensory World of Lady Hilton
Megan J. Elias
Notes
List of Contributors
Index