{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","uuid":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","normalized_title":"timeforthingslaborleisureandtheriseofmassconsumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","isbns":["9780674250529","9780674250536","9780674979512"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":355,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%20for%20Things%20Labor%2C%20Leisure%2C%20and%20the%20Rise%20of%20Mass%20Consumption","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/search"},"page":{"printed_page":150,"pdf_page":158,"physical_index":158,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"a8defcfeddcafcbe3f92f00f008ecd83f4fe57d73464f588710db67a9e2463cb"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"“congealed time” in the form of consumer durables obscured the question of real free time.\n\nChange in understandings of wage labor is, however, only one side of the picture. The other side, which is the topic of the present chapter and the two that follow, concerns the ways in which commodities were presented to the consumer. Beginning in the early decades of the twentieth century, a set of developments took place that had the efect of reframing objects of consumption, focusing attention on the commodity-in-itself, as opposed to the commodity-in-use. These developments both reflected and at the same time fed into the tendency for utility to be thought of primarily as a property of objects rather than as a product of real practices, in the course of which objects are actually put to use. The set of developments were quite large in scale. They include the stabilization of the physical properties of products so that products became more uniform, the rise of product brands, changes in the legal (and underlying moral) framing of the entitlement of consumers to useful products, and the emergence and institutionalization of consumer product testing. These developments took place against the background of the rapid standardization of the economy—a complex and multifaceted process that became a subject of intense discussion, especially during the first three decades of the twentieth century. It was the standardization of consumer products (as well as work and the wage) that made it possible to think of the wage as commensurable with the time and efort given up in exchange for it. Standardization in part reflected the coalescing of a new moral economy under industrial capitalism, in which wage-labor exchange was rendered fair by virtue of the purchasing power of the wage over consumer commodities that signified stores of potential activity.\n\nStandardization is typically taken to refer to eforts to coordinate production in an industrial economy, with the objective of reducing the costs of production. Although originating in the sphere of production, however, standardization also came to have a significant impact on consumption, with implications for the meaning of consumer goods. It was standardized goods that drove the early mass consumer market—the model T Ford being the paradigmatic example. In addition to standardized consumer products, standardization in the sphere of consumption was manifested in the development of consumer brands, which indexed regular and predictable product characteristics, and the emergence of warranties for consumer durables, which signaled commitments on the part of firms to ensure that goods would perform as advertised. Those who promoted standardization often described its benefits in terms of higher-quality and more reliable consumer products. This was reflected in the early years of the twentieth century in the emphasis marketing campaigns put on the mechanical properties of products. The standardized commodity was supposed to be a transparent and stable container of utility, even as the increasing technological complexity of consumer goods rendered them ever more black-box like. As goods themselves became standardized, so too did the means of their distribution, as the chain store model of retail spread rapidly across the economy in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.\n\n150\n\nTime for Things","previous_page":null,"next_page":151}