Ordering the World of Goods: Consumer Revolution and the Classification of Objects in Eighteenth-Century France

Abstract

This article explores the cultural transformations that accompanied the rise of consumption in eighteenth-century western Europe by examining how defenders of luxury, notably George Marie Butel-Dumont, created new taxonomies to order an expanding world of goods. Building on the work of earlier luxury apologists such as Bernard Mandeville, Voltaire, and David Hume, Dumont reclassified objects of necessity, luxury, and ostentation to redeem the category of luxury and thereby legitimate increased consumption.