About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

19 Geo. J. Gender & L. 499 (2017-2018)
Rational Households: Consumption between Love and Hate

handle is hein.journals/grggenl19 and id is 511 raw text is: RATIONAL HOUSEHOLDS: CONSUMPTION BETWEEN LOVE AND HATE ANAT ROSENBERG* You can be clever and like clothes. Such was British Prime Minister Theresa May's reproachful-cum-apologetic response to comments on her fashionable style. Western culture is both attached to consumption and suspects its own pursuits. This Article suggests that law has had an important role in shaping this contradic- tory experience. It offers a case study of the modernization of consumption through law, focusing on the common law doctrine of necessaries which regulated the con- sumer credit of married women, and by implication, household consumption. The doctrine was modernized in England in the late nineteenth century, with the rise of a new logic of rational household management, which displaced on older rational- ity centered on the luxuriousness of commodities. The analysis traces doctrinal modernization. Looking at its driving forces, it shows that the paradigm of rational household management, while liberating in the sense of abandoning luxury critique, was driven by fears of new consum- ers joining markets: women and the working classes. The new paradigm was not wholly liberating: it sought to discipline, and, by turning inwards, enacted a mistrust of consumption. The discussion reveals a contradictory development, at once enabling and undermining consumer pursuits. INTRODUCTION . .................................................... 500 1. THE ORDER OF APPEARANCES .................................... 501 1.1. DOCTRINE: FUNCTION AND CULTURE ......................... 501 1.2. NECESSARIES, LUXURIES AND SOCIAL HIERARCHIES ............. 502 2. GENDER, CLASS, AND THE TERRAIN OF CONSUMPTION ................. 504 2.1. CONSUMPTION POLITICIZED ................................. 504 2.2. THE CREDIT DRAPERS ..................................... 506 * Assistant Professor, Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, Radzyner Law School. arosenberg@idc. ac.il. For thoughtful comments and discussions of earlier versions, I am grateful to participants in the fifth annual Berg conference, The Arts in Legal History, especially my commentator Michael Zakim; participants in the 2015 Junior Scholar Law & Humanities Workshop at Columbia University, especially my commentators Robin West and Amanda Claybaugh; to participants at the Haifa University Law Faculty Seminar 2015, to Elizabeth Blackmar, Richard Brooks, David Ibbetson, Rami Kaplan, Roy Kreitner, Eliav Lieblich, Assaf Likhovski, Noam Magor, Moran Ofir, Uriel Procaccia, Galia Schneebaum, Yoram Shachar, Adam Shinar, Simon Stem, Noel Thompson, Irene Tucker, and Noam Yuran. For able research assistance I am thankful to Elad Erdan and Kovi Yosef. 0 2018, Anat Rosenberg. 499

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most