The goverance of consumption: sumptuary laws and shifting forms of regulation

This paper situates itself in the sociology of goverance. Goverance is idenified as concerted action through ‘projects’ conceived as practices and discourses directed towards the control of other social agens ad instituions. The paper takes sumptuary laws regulating he dress, apperrance and consumption practices of individuals as a case study. The analysis advanced focuses, in particular, on the discourses within which sumptuary laws are located and explores the shifts and variatios in these discourses. It argues that it is new combinations and recombinations of regulatory discourses that mark decisvie and significant changes in projects of governances.