Women, consumption, and the circulation of ideas in South-Eastern Europe, 17th–19th centuries

Abstract

Recent research on fashion and luxury sheds new light on the role women played in the development of consumption and trade. To what extent did a growing demand for consumer goods lead to social change? In what ways did new commodities affect the lives of women in Southeastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire? Some historians have analyzed the importance of gender and class in shaping consumption.1 Other studies have examined the impact the world of goods had on modelling individuals in past and present societies.2 For instance, a conference held in Berlin in 2016 analyzed the emotions that “colonial objects” stirred in Europeans in the Early Modern period.3 Similarly, another conference, also held in Berlin in the same year, assessed the relationship between “objects” that circulated between the Ottoman Empire and Europe as well as the networks created along the roads they travelled.