Reinhild Kreis, University of Mannheim

17. 6. 2019 od 15.00

Zasedací místnost Etnologického ústavu AV ČR, Na Florenci 3, 5. patro

My presentation focuses on the often neglected “no-man’s land” between markets and households, production and consumption. Whereas historians of modern consumer societies have established a narrative according to which formerly self-sufficient households increasingly became consumers of ready-made goods and services, I will present a different story. To a large degree, modern consumer societies really are “prosumer” societies in which households combine their own labor, skills and time (production) with what they purchase on the market (consumption) to fabricate a diverse range of products, be it a cake, a sweater, or a new shoe rack. How production and consumption should be combined in the provisioning of households, however, is highly controversial. It is exactly the flexibility of options in the field of “prosumption” that make it a battleground for conflicting ideas about social and economic orders.

Discussant Dr. Karel Šima

Pozvánka pdf.