The manner in which consumer goods can affect human affairs, however, differs. While demand for certain consumer goods can lead to oppression, the way people demand consumer goods may also destroy oppressive practices. When Britons demanded sugar with no regard to the way sugar and coffee they enjoyed for the breakfast were produced, slavery flourished. But when the Britons began to demand goods that they believed were not causing slavery, the change of tastes undermined slave trade and contributed to the ending of slavery. While tobacco and cotton were not as important at the time as sugar, they played a similar function in abolitionist and independence movements that fought against slavery.

The function of consumer goods is also linked to material culture. This was the case in the eighteenth century, as books by Dubois and Carrigus and Hochschild demonstrate. European colonial practices that led to the enslavement of tens of...
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