From Graven Images: Patterns of Modern Materialism 0231912420, 9780231912426

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FROM GRAVEN IMAGES Patterns of Modem Materialism

CHANDRA MUKERJI

FROM GRAVEN IMAGES Patterns of Modern Materialism

CHANDRA MUKERJI

In this startling new look at the roots of technological innovation and mass con¬ sumption in Western society, Chandra Mukerji demonstrates that the Western obsession with economic development and material comfort actually goes back well before the Industrial Revolu¬ tion and that it, in fact, provided the cultural impetus for industrialism. Searching for the beginnings of the development of European materialistic culture in the early modern period, the author locates those beginnings and illuminates the dynamics of the culture that gave birth to them in four intrigu¬ ing case studies. The first traces the development of simple printed pictures as forms of mass culture contrasting with the better-known Renaissance art that was emerging at the same time. The second focuses on the publication of maps and geographical writings, the control of which was used to improve the state’s competitive position. The third study examines the “book of nature” metaphor of the seventeenthcentury “scientific revolution,” which gave rise to the new science and the growth of scientific economics. The last takes as a case study the growth of the British cotton industry, and shows how the new cultural forms discussed in the early part of the book combined to

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