Added on 06/15/09
"Nothing is inherently trash," claims Strasser (Satisfaction Guaranteed) in this vibrant social history of American attitudes toward superfluous or unusable material items. Before the 20th centuryAwhen mass production, post-WWII consumer culture and...
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"Nothing is inherently trash," claims Strasser (Satisfaction Guaranteed) in this vibrant social history of American attitudes toward superfluous or unusable material items. Before the 20th centuryAwhen mass production, post-WWII consumer culture and planned obsolescence created a society in which disposability was the normAbroken crockery, food, buttons, bones, fat, rags, tin, paper and other refuse were precious commodities, especially in areas of urban or rural poverty. Drawing on the work of such anthropologists as Mary Douglas, Thorsten Veblen and Claude L?vi-Strauss, of social critics like Jacob Riis and of such authors as Lydia Maria Child (whose popular The American Frugal Housewife was published in 1829), Strasser demonstrates how the designation "trash" exposes underlying attitudes about class, race, ethnicity, patriotism, survival, religion and art. Perceptively noting the intersections between capitalism, consumerism, industrialization and class mobility, the book spills... See less 
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