M a r k e t e r s still love to sell us nostalgic forms of authentic goods. Th e United States off ers Disneyworld’s pristine Main Street U.S.A.; Cracker Barrel’s general store, replete with its old-fashioned candy jars and moon pies amid a faux-rusticated interior; Pottery Barn’s new distressed furniture, machine made to look old and weath-ered. Likewise, Britain is awash in the selling of a venerable old England, from the vine-covered cottage, to the proliferation of the heritage industry, to the open-ing of Dickens World in Kent, to the immensely popular Hovis Bread ads, which featured a young boy delivering loaves of fresh bread down a cobblestone street. In a diff erent variation of the phenomenon, marketers present a refi ned aesthetic, one miraculously and allegedly free of the vulgar taint of commerce; here we fi nd the soft -focus Ralph Lauren ad; the fi reside scene of the L. L. Bean Christmas catalog, with its golden retriever puppies reclining on softfl annel; and the solid sophistication (with lovely wood accents) of the venerable London store Liberty. In every case, the viewer is assured that the real is “real”—and readily available for a reasonable price.

Over the course of the next century, dramatic changes in advertis-ing, marketing, and shopping would encourage consumers not simply to live a life but to select among lifestyles; not to stay within the given circumstances and time of their birth but to live within multiple pasts; not to remain fi xed in one identity but to perform within many.

Consuming Traditions