co-edited with Regina Lee Blaszczyk

Capitalism and the Senses is the first edited volume to explore how the forces of capitalism are entangled with everyday sensory experience. If the senses have a history, as Karl Marx wrote, then that history is inseparable from the development of capitalism, which has both taken advantage of the senses and influenced how sensory experience has changed over time.

This pioneering collection shows how seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching have both shaped and been shaped by commercial interests from the turn of the twentieth century to our own time. From the manipulation of taste and texture in the food industry to the careful engineering of the feel of artificial fabrics, capitalist enterprises have worked to commodify the senses in a wide variety of ways. Drawing on history, anthropology, geography, and other fields, the volume’s essays analyze not only where this effort has succeeded but also where the senses have resisted control and the logic of markets. The result is an innovative ensemble that demonstrates how the drive to exploit sensorial experience for profit became a defining feature of capitalist modernity and establishes the senses as an important dimension of the history of capitalism.

Contributors: Nicholas Anderman, Regina Lee Blaszczyk, Jessica P. Clark, Ai Hisano, Lisa Jacobson, Sven Kube, Grace Lees-Maffei, Ingemar Pettersson, David Suisman, Ana María Ulloa, Nicole Welk-Joerger.

You can visit the University of Pennsylvania Press web page for the book here.

You can hear an interview I did about the book with the podcast New Books Network podcast here.

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Contents:

Introduction
Regina Lee Blaszczyk and David Suisman

Part I. Framing Capitalism and the Senses
Chapter 1. “Use Not Perfumery to Flavor Soup”: The Science of the Senses in Aesthetic
Capitalism
Ai Hisano
Chapter 2. Chasing Flavor: Sensory Science and the Economy
Ingemar Pettersson
Chapter 3. Richer Sounds: Capitalism, Musical Instruments, and the Cold War Sonic Divide
Sven Kube

Part II. Resisting Rationalization
Chapter 4. Altered States and Gustatory Taste: The Sensory Synergies of Whiskey Marketing in the Mid-Twentieth-Century United States
Lisa Jacobson
Chapter 5. The Psychophysics of Taste and Smell: From Experimental Science to Commercial Tool
Ana María Ulloa
Chapter 6. Sky’s the Limit: Capitalism, the Senses, and the Failure of Commercial Supersonic
Aviation in the United States
David Suisman
Chapter 7. Sounding Maritime Metal: On Weathering Steel and Listening to Capitalism at Sea
Nicholas Anderman

Part III. Production
Chapter 8. Making Human Trash Tasty: A History of Sweet Cattle Feed in the Progressive Era
Nicole Welk-Joerger
Chapter 9. Getting a Handle on It: Thomas Lamb, Mass Production, and Touch in Design History
Grace Lees-Maffei

Part IV. Marketplace
Chapter 10. Fragrance and Fair Women: Perfumers and Consumers in Modern London
Jessica P. Clark
Chapter 11. Sold on Softness: DuPont Synthetics and Sensory Experience
Regina Lee Blaszczyk
Chapter 12. Feminine Touches: The Sensory World of Lady Hilton
Megan J. Elias

Notes
List of Contributors
Index