From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Sat Sep 09 2006 - 23:54:43 EDT
Sombart also had ideas about the importance of capitalists' unproductive expenditures on luxuries. He did not think of them in terms of their effects on macroeconomic stabilization role or the growth rate. He certainly did not demote luxury spending to a a mere residual as did Otto Bauer in his scheme (it's good to guard against the common error of conflating Grossman's extension of the Bauer's scheme with his actual theory spelled out over 700 pages). Jack Goody has recently written: This luxury had a basic role to play in the growth of capitalism, or, as I would prefer to say, of international exchange. In other and earlier cultures exchange took place in basic commodities and was local and less frequent; people ate what they grew or bought in the neighbourhood market. It was the luxury items that were brought from outside and which formed the basis of the long- distance trade, of inter-societal exchange. It was Sombart who con- sidered that a central factor in the growth of exchange in the modern world was the trade in luxury goods. From one point of view that point is obvious. Because of the problem of transport distant com- merce inevitably involved small, highly valued items, that is, luxury objects. They may have been worth very little when they started (la mise`re) but they acquired luxury status by their rarity in their new environment, after being transported a considerable distance. That would be the case with kola nuts in West Africa, collected freely in the Asante forest and not especially prized or used, but a valuable stimulant (from caffeine) for Muslims travelling through desert or savannah lands, and an important element in Arab medicine in North Africa and eventually in Europe, where they were made into medicinally recommended kola biscuits and kola wine at the end of the 19th century. The third phase in their progress was the move from luxury to mass consumption by modern productive methods, when they eventually became Coca-Cola1, but incorporating industrial chemicals rather than wild produce. From page 348 Social Science Information Vol 45 - no 3 Social Science Information, Vol. 45, No. 3, 341-348 (2006) DOI: 10.1177/0539018406066526 © 2006 Maison des Sciences de l'Homme , SAGE Publications From misery to luxury Jack Goody
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