Prof Frank Trentmann
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Overview
Overview
Highlights
My work has focused on consumption, politics, morality and material culture. I am Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London, and an associate of the Consumer Society Research Centre at the University of Helsinki. I have written about consumer culture; everyday life; water and the modern city; free trade and fair trade; and energy. I have been the principal investigator of the AHRC project “Material Cultures of Energy” (2014-17) and a member of the EPSRC–ESRC research centre DEMAND (Dynamics of Energy, Mobility and Demand). I was educated at Hamburg University, the London School of Economics (BA), and at Harvard University (MA, PhD). Before joining Birkbeck, I was Assistant Professor at Princeton University. Between 2002 and 2007, I was the director of the £5 million Cultures of Consumption research programme, co-funded by ESRC and AHRC. I have been Visiting Fellow at the Cambridge Centre for History and Economics, Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence as well as a Visiting Professor at Bielefeld University, the University of St Gallen, the British Academy, and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris. In 2014 I was awarded the Moore Distinguished Fellowship at Caltech, in 2017 the Humboldt Prize for Research (Humboldt-Forschungspreis) by the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation.
I am currently working on a book project, The Germans: A Moral History, 1942-2022 which tells the story of the German people from the Second World War to the present in order to assess their moral transformation. The book is under contract with Knopf (in the United States), AllenLane/Penguin (UK) and Fischer (Germany) as well as McClelland & Stewart (Canada), De Arbeiderspers (Netherlands), and Corpus (Russia).
My latest book Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First unfolds the rise of our modern material world and examines the global challenges of our relentless pursuit of more – from waste and debt to stress and inequality. 880 pages, 72 illustrations. (Allen Lane/Penguin 2016); several foreign editions: German; Russian; Italian; Taiwan; China; and (forthcoming) Turkish. Also as audiobook: audible. Chosen as Book of the Year by The Times, The Sunday Times, Times Literary Supplement; BBC History Magazine; Bloomberg. Shortlisted for the NDR non-fiction prize (Germany). Winner of the Austrian Wissenschaftsbuch/science book prize in 2018 for the best book in the humanities, social sciences and cultural studies. For reviews, media and further information, see: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/history/our-staff/academic-staff/professor-frank-trentmann/empire-of-things.
My previous publications include Free Trade Nation: Consumption, Civil Society and Commerce in Modern Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), which was awarded the Whitfield Prize by the Royal Historical Society; a Japanese edition appeared with NTT Publishing Co., Tokyo; the Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption (Oxford University Press, 2012; editor); Food and Globalization (Oxford: Berg, 2008, with Alexander Nützenadel); Consuming Cultures, Global Perspectives: Historical Trajectories, Transnational Exchanges (Oxford: Berg, 2006, with John Brewer); Time, Consumption, and Everyday Life (Oxford: Berg, 2009, with Elizabeth Shove and Rick Wilk); Infrastructures in Practice: The Evolution of Demand in Networked Societies (London: Routledge, 2018, with Elizabeth Shove).
I have also published in major academic journals, including Past & Present, Journal of British Studies, Historical Journal, Journal of Historical Geography, Environment and Planning.
I was guest editor of the special issue of the Science Museum Group Journal on “material cultures of energy”, 9 (spring 2018), http://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/issues/spring-2018/ . I have written the introduction to the exhibition catalogue Object love (2018), curated and edited by Anne Berk, Museum Hedendaagse Kunst, Sittard (Netherlands), and Museum Morsbroich (Germany).
I have communicated academic research to public audiences, e.g. most recently in the article “The Unequal Future of Consumption”, in The New Republic (Sept 2020), and published articles in The Guardian; Huffington Post; La Repubblica; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung; Times Literary Supplement. TV and radio appearances, including BBC, Arte, NDR, Deutschlandfunk, Swiss TV.
Keynote lectures to academic and public audiences include:
“Consuming and Mobility”, invited lecture to BWM, Munich (digital), 30 June 2020.
“Material Histories of the World: Scales, Methods and Problems”, keynote to the History Conference of Denmark, M/S Maritime Museum of Denmark, Elsinore/Helsingør, 20 August 2018.
“Nachhaltiger Konsum”, Nachhaltigkeitskongress "Mehr TateN! - Mehr Zukunft", 10 Jahre Nachhaltigkeitsstrategie Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart 13 April 2018.
“The Social Life of Energy Futures: Experts, Users and Standards in the Golden Age of Modernization, c. 1900-1973” (with Rebecca Wright), Lisbon, World Energy Council, Secretaries Strategy Day, 16 October 2017.
“The Power of Things: A New History of Consumer Society”, Yale University, Annual Lecture of the Center for Historical Enquiry & the Social Sciences, 7 March 2017.
“Materielle Kultur und Konsumenten: Potenzial und Herausforderung für eine nachhaltige Entwicklung” (Material Culture and Consumers: Opportunities and Challeges for Sustainable Development) Carl-von-Carlowitz lecture, the annual congress of the German Rat für Nachhaltigkeit (the German government’s Council for Sustainability), Berlin, 3 June 2015
Recent conferences organised or co-organised include:
"Markets and Morals. New Perspectives on Moral Economy in the Modern World"; Reichenau/Germany 4-5 October 2019, (co-organiser with Prof Laura Rischbieter, Univ of Konstanz, Germany).
“Energy Transitions in the 20th century – Lessons from the Past for the Future”, 30 November 2017, Science Museum, London.
“Scales of Disruption: Methods, Experiences and Insights for Change”, Birkbeck, 10 February 2015. Workshop with Social Scientists, Defra, DECC, EDF, Transport for London, Climate UK.
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Research
Research
Research interests
- My work has focused on consumption, politics, morality and material culture. I have written about consumer culture; everyday life; water and the modern city; free trade and fair trade; and energy. History of morality in modern/contemporary Germany
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Supervision and teaching
Supervision and teaching
Supervision
Current doctoral researchers
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MARION LESTER-CARD
Doctoral alumni
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GUY BECKETT
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ANTONIO WEISS
Teaching
Teaching modules
- The Modern World (SSHC411S4)
- People and their Things: Material Worlds from the Renaissance to Today (SSHC547S5)
- Capitalism: Ideas, Systems, Practices (SSHC549S7)
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Publications
Publications
Article
- Trentmann, Frank (2020) Britain first: the official history of the United Kingdom, according to the Home Office - a critical review. History ISSN 0018-2648.
- Trentmann, Frank (2020) Britain first: the official history of the United Kingdom, according to the Home Office. Times Literary Supplement ISSN 0040-7895.
- Trentmann, Frank (2020) The unequal future of consumption. The New Republic 251 (9), ISSN 0028-6583.
- Trentmann, Frank and Carlsson-Hyslop, A. (2018) The evolution of energy demand: politics, daily life and public housing, Britain 1920s-70s. Historical Journal 61 (3), pp. 807-839. ISSN 0018-246X.
- Trentmann, Frank and Otero-Cleves, A.M. (2017) Paths, detours, and connections: consumption and its contribution to Latin American History. Historia Critica 65, pp. 13-28. ISSN 0121-1617.
- Taylor, V. and Trentmann, Frank (2011) Liquid politics: water and the politics of everyday life in the modern city. Past and Present 211 (1), pp. 199-241. ISSN 0031-2746.
- Trentmann, Frank (2011) Consumer Society - RIP: a comment. Contemporary European History 20 (1), pp. 27-31. ISSN 0960-7773.
- Trentmann, Frank (2011) The odd couple: consumption and civil society. Recherches Britanniques: Société, culture, politique en Grande-Bretagne du 18ème au 21ème siècle 1 (1), pp. 37-51.
- Taylor, V. and Chappells, H. and Medd, W. and Trentmann, Frank (2009) Drought is normal: the socio-technical evolution of drought and water demand in England and Wales, 1893-2006. Journal of Historical Geography 35 (3), pp. 568-591. ISSN 0305-7488.
- Trentmann, Frank (2009) Crossing divides: consumption and globalization in history. Journal of Consumer Culture 9 (2), pp. 187-220. ISSN 1469-5405.
- Trentmann, Frank (2009) Materiality in the future of history: things, practices, and politics. Journal of British Studies 48 (2), pp. 283-307. ISSN 0021-9371.
- Trentmann, Frank (2009) The long history of contemporary consumer society: chronologies, practices, and politics in modern Europe. Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 49, pp. 107-128. ISSN 0066-6505.
- Trentmann, Frank (2007) Before 'fair trade': empire, free trade, and the moral economies of food in the modern world. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 25 (6), pp. 1079-1102. ISSN 1472-3433.
- Trentmann, Frank (2006) Frank Trentmann answers ten questions about economic sociology. Economic Sociology: The European Electronic Newsletter 7 (2), pp. 22-25.
- Trentmann, Frank (2004) Beyond consumerism: new historical perspectives on consumption. Journal of Contemporary History 39 (3), pp. 373-401. ISSN 0022-0094.
- Trentmann, Frank (1998) Political culture and political economy: interest, ideology and free trade. Review of International Political Economy 5 (2), pp. 217-251. ISSN 0969-2290.
- Trentmann, Frank (1997) Wealth versus welfare: the British left between free trade and national political economy before the First World War. Historical Research 70 (171), pp. 70-98. ISSN 0950-3471.
- Trentmann, Frank (1996) The transformation of fiscal reform: reciprocity, modernization, and the fiscal debate within the business community in early Twentieth-Century Britain. The Historical Journal 39 (4), pp. 1005-1048. ISSN 0018-246X.
- Trentmann, Frank (1995) New sources on an old family: the Rothschild Papers at the special archive, Moscow. Financial History Review 2 (1), pp. 73-79. ISSN 0968-5650.
- Trentmann, Frank (1994) Civilisation and its discontents: English neo-romanticism and the transformation of anti-modernism in Twentieth-Century western culture. Journal of Contemporary History 29 (4), pp. 583-625. ISSN 0022-0094.
Book
- Brewer, J. and Fromer, N. and Albritton Jonsson, F. and Trentmann, Frank, eds. (2019) Scarcity in the modern world: history, politics, society and sustainability, 1800–2075. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 9781350040915.
- Trentmann, Frank and Sum, A.B. and Riviera, M., eds. (2018) Work in progress. Economy and environment in the hands of experts. pp. 103-130. Munich, Germany: Oekom verlag. ISBN 9783962380106.
- Shove, E. and Trentmann, Frank, eds. (2018) Infrastructures in practice: the dynamics of demand in networked societies. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. ISBN 9781138476165.
- Trentmann, Frank (2016) Materielle Kultur und Energiekonsum: Verbraucher und ihre Rolle für eine nachhaltige Entwicklung. Carl-von-Carlowitz. 5, Munich, Germany: oekem Verlag. ISBN 9783865818263.
- Trentmann, Frank (2016) Empire of things: how we became a world of consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First. London, UK: Penguin.
- Trentmann, Frank, ed. (2012) The Oxford handbook of the history of consumption. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199561216.
- Shove, E. and Trentmann, Frank and Wilk, R. (2009) Time, consumption, and everyday life. Cultures of Consumption Series. Oxford, UK: Berg. ISBN 9781847883643.
- Trentmann, Frank (2009) Free trade nation: commerce, consumption, and civil society in modern Britain. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199567324.
- Trentmann, Frank, ed. (2009) Is free trade fair? new perspectives on the world trading system. London, UK: Smith Institute. ISBN 1905370431.
- Trentmann, Frank (2009) Free trade nation: consumption, civil society and commerce in modern Britain. Contemporary British History Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISSN 1361-9462. ISBN 9780199567324.
- Nuetzenadel, A. and Trentmann, Frank (2008) Food and globalization: consumption, markets and politics in the modern world. Oxford, UK: Berg. ISBN 9781845206796.
- Trentmann, Frank and Soper, K., eds. (2007) Citizenship and consumption. Consumption and Public Life. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9780230553460.
- Bevir, M. and Trentmann, Frank, eds. (2007) Governance, consumers and citizens: agency and resistance in contemporary politics. Consumption and Public Life. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781349355037.
- Grant, K. and Levine, P. and Trentmann, Frank (2007) Beyond sovereignty: Britain, Empire, and Transnationalism, c. 1860-1950. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781349540891.
- Trentmann, Frank and Brewer, J., eds. (2006) Consuming cultures, global perspectives: historical trajectories, transnational exchanges. Cultures of Consumption Series. Oxford, UK: Berg Publishers. ISBN 9781845202477.
- Trentmann, Frank and Flemming, J., eds. (2006) Food and conflict in Europe in the age of the two world wars. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781349541072.
- Trentmann, Frank, ed. (2006) The making of the consumer: knowledge, power and identity in the modern world. Cultures of Consumption Series. Oxford, UK: Berg Publishers. ISBN 9781845202491.
- Trentmann, Frank and Hall, J., eds. (2005) Civil society: a reader in history, theory and global politics. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781403915429.
- Bevir, M. and Trentmann, Frank, eds. (2004) Markets in historical contexts: ideas and politics in the modern world. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521044516.
- Trentmann, Frank and Daunton, M., eds. (2004) Worlds of political economy: knowledge and power in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781403932181.
- Trentmann, Frank, ed. (2003) Paradoxes of civil society: new perspectives on modern German and British history. Oxford, UK: Berghahn Books. ISBN 9781571811431.
- Bevir, M. and Trentmann, Frank, eds. (2002) Critiques of capital in modern Britain and America: transatlantic exchanges. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9780230505728.
Book Section
- Albritton Jonsson, F. and Brewer, J. and Fromer, N. and Trentmann, Frank (2019) Introduction: Scarcity in the Modern World: History, Politics, Society and Sustainability, 1800–2075. In: Brewer, J. and Fromer, N. and Albritton Jonsson, F. and Trentmann, Frank (eds.) Scarcity in the Modern World: History, Politics, Society and Sustainability, 1800–2075. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 1-20. ISBN 9781350040915.
- Shin, Hiroki and Trentmann, Frank (2019) Energy shortages and the politics of time: resilience, redistribution and ‘Normality’ in Japan and East Germany, 1940s–1970s. In: Brewer, J. and Fromer, N. and Albritton Jonsson, F. and Trentmann, Frank (eds.) Scarcity in the Modern World: History, Politics, Society and Sustainability, 1800–2075. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 247-266. ISBN 9781350040915.
- Trentmann, Frank (2019) Under stress: civility, compassion and national solidarity – the refugee crisis in Germany after 1945. In: Duina, F. (ed.) States and Nations, Power and Civility: Hallsian Perspectives. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 9781487502379.
- Chappells, H. and Trentmann, Frank (2019) Disruption in and across time. In: Shove, E. and Trentmann, Frank (eds.) Infrastructures in Practice: The Dynamics of Demand in Networked Societies. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. ISBN 9781138476165.
- Reinisch, Jessica (2018) What makes an expert? The view from UNRRA, 1943–47. In: Trentmann, Frank and Sum, A.B. and Riviera, M. (eds.) Work in Progress. Economy and Environment in the Hands of Experts. Munich, Germany: Oekom. pp. 103-130. ISBN 9783962380106.
- Trentmann, Frank (2017) Material histories of the world: scales and dynamics. In: Arnold, John H. and Hilton, M. and Rueger, Jan (eds.) History after Hobsbawm: Writing the Past for the Twenty-First Century. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198768784.
- Trentmann, Frank (2017) The lessons of war: reordering the public and private capacities and dynamics of consumption. In: Berghoff, H. and Logemann, J. and Römer, F. (eds.) The Consumer on the Home Front: Second World War Civilian Consumption in Transnational Perspective. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198784265.
- Trentmann, Frank (2016) Unstoppable: consumption after the boom – resilience, adaptation and renewal. In: Doering-Manteuffel, A. and Raphael, L. and Schlemmer, T. (eds.) Vorgeschichte der Gegenwart Dimensionen des Strukturbruchs nach dem Boom. Gottingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. pp. 293-308. ISBN 9783525300787.
- Trentmann, Frank (2009) Disruption is normal: blackouts, breakdowns and the elasticity of everyday life. In: Shove, E. and Trentmann, Frank and Wilk, R. (eds.) Time, Consumption, and Everyday Life. Oxford, UK: Berg, Oxford. pp. 67-84. ISBN 9781847883643.
- Everson, Michelle and Joerges, C. (2008) Consumer citizenship in postnational constellations?. In: Trentmann, Frank and Soper, K. (eds.) Citizenship and Consumption New York. Consumption and Public Life. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9780230553460.
- Trentmann, Frank (2008) Before 'fair trade': empire, free trade, and the moral economies of food in the modern world. In: Nuetzenadel, A. and Trentmann, Frank (eds.) Food and Globalization: Consumption, Markets and Politics in the Modern World. Cultures of Consumption Series. Oxford, UK: Berg Publishers. ISBN 9781845206796.
- Trentmann, Frank (2006) Coping with shortage: the problem of food security and global visions of coordination, c.1890s-1950. In: Trentmann, Frank and Just, F. (eds.) Food and Conflict in Europe in the Age of the Two World Wars. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 13-48. ISBN 9781403986849.
- Trentmann, Frank and Just, F. (2006) Introduction. In: Trentmann, Frank and Just, F. (eds.) Food and Conflict in Europe in the Age of the Two World Wars. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 1-12. ISBN 9781403986849.
- Trentmann, Frank (2006) The modern evolution of the consumer: meanings, knowledge, and identities before the age of affluence. In: Trentmann, Frank and Brewer, John (eds.) Consuming cultures, global perspectives: historical trajectories, transnational exchanges. Cultures of Consumption Series. Oxford, UK: Berg Publishers. pp. 19-69. ISBN 9781845202460.
- Trentmann, Frank (2006) Affluence. In: Garon, S. and Maclachlan, P.L. (eds.) The Ambivalent Consumer: Questioning Consumption in East Asia and the West. New York, USA: Cornell University Press. pp. 21-44. ISBN 9780801473029.
- Trentmann, Frank (2006) The 'British' sources of social power: reflections on history, sociology, and intellectual biography. In: Hall, J.A. and Schroeder, R. (eds.) An Anatomy of Power: The Social Theory of Michael Mann. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 285-305. ISBN 9780521615181.
- Trentmann, Frank (2006) Consumption. In: Merriman, J. and Winter, J. (eds.) Europe since 1914: Encyclopaedia of the Age of War and Reconstruction. Detroit, USA: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 704-717. ISBN 9780684313689.
- Trentmann, Frank (2006) The resurrection and decomposition of Cobden in Britain and the west: an essay in the politics of reputation. In: Howe, A. and Morgan, S. (eds.) Rethinking Nineteenth-Century Liberalism: Richard Cobden Bicentenary Essays. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. pp. 264-288. ISBN 9781138259348.
- Trentmann, Frank (2005) Knowing consumers - histories, identities, practices: an introduction. In: Trentmann, Frank (ed.) The making of the consumer: knowledge, power and identity in the modern world. Oxford, UK: Berg Publishers. pp. 1-27. ISBN 1845202481.
- Hall, John A. and Trentmann, Frank (2005) Contests over civil society: introductory perspectives. In: Hall, John A. and Trentmann, Frank (eds.) Civil society: A reader in history, theory and global politics. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 1-25. ISBN 1 4039 1542 3.
- Trentmann, Frank and Taylor, V. (2005) From users to consumers: water politics in nineteenth-century London. In: Trentmann, Frank (ed.) The making of the consumer: knowledge, power and identity in the modern world. Oxford, UK: Berg Publishers. pp. 53-79. ISBN 1845202481.
- Trentmann, Frank (2004) Vergangenheit, zukunft, und die inszenierung von wirklichkeiten: politische okonomie und politische kommunikation in Grossbritannien zu beginn des zwanzigsten jahrhunderts. In: Berghoff, H. and Vogel, J. (eds.) Wirtschaftsgeschichte als Kulturgeschichte: Dimensionen eines Perspektivenwechsels. Frankfurt, Germany: Campus. pp. 405-434. ISBN 9783593375960.
- Trentmann, Frank (2004) The problem with civil society: putting modern European history back into contemporary debate. In: Glasius, M. and Lewis, D and Seckinelgin, H. (eds.) Exploring Civil Society: Political and Cultural Contexts. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. pp. 26-35. ISBN 9780415325462.
- Trentmann, Frank and Daunton, Martin (2004) Worlds of political economy: knowledge, practices and contestation. In: Daunton, Martin and Trentmann, Frank (eds.) Worlds of political economy: knowledge and power in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 1-23. ISBN 1 4039 3218 2.
- Trentmann, Frank (2003) Fiscal politics 1688-1939: taxation, free trade, and tariff reform. In: Loades, D. (ed.) Reader’s Guide to British History. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. pp. 523-529. ISBN 9781579582427.
- Trentmann, Frank (2003) Leisure and recreation. In: Loades, D. (ed.) Reader’s Guide to British History. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. pp. 798-802. ISBN 9781579582427.
- Trentmann, Frank (2002) National identity and consumer politics: free trade and tariff reform. In: O'Brien, Patrick Karl and Winch, Donald (eds.) The political economy of British historical experience, 1688–1914. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 215-242. ISBN 0 19 726272 4.
- Trentmann, Frank (2001) Bread, milk and democracy: consumption and citizenship in twentieth-century Britain. In: Daunton, Martin and Hilton, Matthew (eds.) The politics of consumption: material culture and citizenship in Europe and America. Oxford: Berg Publishers. pp. 129-163. ISBN 9781859734667.
- Trentmann, Frank (1996) The strange death of free trade: the erosion of 'liberal consensus' in Great Britain, c.1903-32. In: Biagini, E. (ed.) Citizenship and Community: Liberals, Radicals and Collective Identities in the British Isles, 1865-1931. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 219-250. ISBN 9780521893602.
Editorial
- Trentmann, Frank (2007) Introduction: citizenship and consumption. Journal of Consumer Culture 7 (2), pp. 147-158. Sage. ISSN 1469-5405.
- Morgan, B. and Trentmann, Frank (2006) The politics of necessity. Journal of Consumer Policy 29 (4), pp. 345-335. Springer. ISSN 0168-7034.
- Bevir, M. and Trentmann, Frank (2001) Social justice and modern capitalism: British critiques, traditions, and practices. International Society for the Study of European Ideas: The European Legacy 6 (2), Taylor & Francis.
Monograph
- Trentmann, Frank (1997) Civil society, commerce, and the 'citizen-consumer': popular meanings of free trade in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain. Harvard University.