| Budget Amount *help |
¥1,700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,700,000)
Fiscal Year 1996: ¥500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥500,000)
Fiscal Year 1995: ¥1,200,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,200,000)
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| Research Abstract |
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.
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