Governance of Cons Passion

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xix

   PDF

2. Why Study Sumptuary Law?

   • Alan Hunt

   Pages 1-16

3. A Short History of Sumptuary Law

   • Alan Hunt

   Pages 17-41

4. Tilting Against the Windmills of Fashion

   • Alan Hunt

   Pages 42-76

5. ‘As If God Had Not Made Them Fine Enough’: Moralizing Luxury

   • Alan Hunt

   Pages 77-101

6. The Fundamental Contradiction of Sumptuary Regulation

   • Alan Hunt

   Pages 102-107

7. Recognizability: ‘The Mingle-Mangle of Apparel’

   • Alan Hunt

   Pages 108-141

8. Style Wars: Fashion and the Class Struggle before Classes

   • Alan Hunt

   Pages 142-173

9. Governing the City: Regulation, State Formation and· the Coming of Modernity

   • Alan Hunt

   Pages 174-213

10. Gender Wars: Sex, Power and Resistance

    • Alan Hunt

    Pages 214-254

11. Misogyny and the Political Economy of Marriage: ‘The Detestable Wickedness of Women’

    • Alan Hunt

    Pages 255-272

12. Moral Regulation and Popular Culture

    • Alan Hunt

    Pages 273-294

13. Mapping a Sumptuary Tradition: The English Experience

    • Alan Hunt

    Pages 295-324

14. Enforcing Sumptuary Law

    • Alan Hunt

    Pages 325-356

15. Death or Transformation? The Fate of the Sumptuary Laws

    • Alan Hunt

    Pages 357-391

16. Sumptuary Law, Regulation and Governance

    • Alan Hunt

    Pages 392-405

17. Back Matter

    Pages 432-459

    PDF

This book explores the sumptuary laws that regulated conspicuous consumption in respect to dress, ornaments, and food that were widespread in late medieval and early modern Europe. It argues that sumptuary laws were attempts to stabilize social recognizability in the urban `world of strangers' and in the governance of cities. The gendered character of sumptuary laws are viewed as components of 'gender wars'. These laws are explored as projects directed at the reform of popular culture and in their links to the governance of vagrancy and of popular recreation. This study challenges the view that the sumptuary actually died and develops an argument that in the modern world the regulation of consumption persists, but becomes dispersed throughout a range of both public and private forms of governance. The conclusions stresses the persistence of projects of governance of personal appearance and of private consumption.

• cities
• Europe
• history
• law
• laws
• Moral
• reform
• resistance
• Sex
• transformation

• Departnlent of Law and Sociology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

  Alan Hunt

ALAN HUNT

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