The Wedding Present: Domestic Life Beyond Consumption

Using the 'wedding present ' as a case study, Louise Purbrick offers an alternative analysis of contemporary domestic consumption. Focusing on gift-giving in Britain from 1945 to the present day, with comparative material from North America and Europe, Purbrick investigates the ritualized presentation of objects upon marriage and their subsequent cycles of exchange within the domestic sphere.Making historical, theoretical and methodological contributions to the analysis of contemporary consumption, the book presents new material on the enactment of exchange relationships within everyday domesticity, while re-evaluating consumption theory and examining the methodology of recent studies in consumption and domesticity.The author tests the assumption that consuming creates individual identities, by considering how the specific contexts in which consumption occurs, such as married domesticity, can limit possible versions of selfhood, arguing that consumption cannot be isolated as an explanation of individual or social formation.

Louise Purbrick is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Historical and Critical Studies at the University of Brighton, UK.