Moral Regulation and Popular Culture

In every epoch there has been a distinctive form of ideological critique of the existing social order which is linked with an insistence on the necessity and desirability of some regulatory intervention, captured in the pervasive idea that ‘something ought to be done’. The specific object of this critique has varied over time. We have seen the persistence of the critique of luxury that stretched from the early civilizations of the Mediterranean basin down to the eighteenth century and even beyond. The focus of this chapter is on these moralizing critiques and their relationship to the projects of sumptuary regulation.