In this monumental book historian Frank Trentmann unfolds the extraordinary history that has shaped our material world, from late Ming China, Renaissance Italy and the British Empire to the present. Empire of Things explores how we have come to live with so much stuff, how this changed the course of history, and the global challenges we face as a result.

Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First by Frank Trentmann, 2016

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Things don’t mean anything on their own: they become meaningful because people attribute  meanings to them. These meanings derive from human transactions and motivations, and in particular from how those things are used and circulated. The contributors to this volume examine how things are sold and traded in a variety of social and cultural settings, both present and past.

The Social Life of Things 
Commodities in cultural perspective 
Edited by Arjan Appadurai, 1988

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Value as a non-economic notion is one of the hardest concepts to tackle. Although immaterial, value is one of the core ideas that shape society. It influences hearts and minds, but defies easy definition. Reformulating value as a constituting factor in an open and caring society requires a ‘tilting vision’, which can be found especially among artists. This book illustrates nine alternative rules of value creation, different approaches that may inspire us to regain personal power, share creativity, face uncertainty, liberate time, allow variety and support a more empathic and just society.

Facing Value 
Radical perspectives from the arts 
by Maaike Lauwaert and Francien van Westeren

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The Surplus of Copying 
How Shadow Libraries and Pirate Archives Contribute to the 
Creation of Cultural Memory and the Commons 
By Cornelia Sollfrank

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The Care Manifesto puts forth a vision for a truly caring world. The authors want to reimagine the role of care in our everyday lives, making it the organising principle in every dimension and at every scale of life.

The Care Manifesto – The Politics of Interdependence 
by The Care Collective, 2020

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Initially written as an exhibition proposal entitled Care, the Manifesto For Maintenance Art, 1969! by Mierle Laderman Ukeles promotes ‘maintenance’ (“sustain the change; protect progress”) as an important value. She does so in contrast to the excitement surrounding avant-garde and industrial ‘development’. One of the early lines in the manifesto reads, “The sourball of every revolution: after the revolution, who’s going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning?”

Manifesto for Maintenance Art, 1969! 
by Mierle Laderman Ukeles

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The Struggle for the Commons 
by Silvia Federici, 2014

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Silvia Federici provides a detailed history and critique of the politics of the commons from a feminist perspective. She provides readers with an analysis of some of the key issues in contemporary thinking on this subject. Drawing on rich historical research, she maps the connections between the previous forms of enclosure that occurred with the birth of capitalism and the destruction of the commons and the "new enclosures" at the heart of the present phase of global capitalist accumulation.

Re-Enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons 
by Silvia Federici, 2018

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It’s in your smartphone, you brush your teeth with it and it’s even in your mattress. Plastic is everywhere – and it’s not going anywhere soon. But as important as the material is, we treat it carelessly because we’ve been taught that it’s worthless. We can start to change that.

Plastic is a brilliant material, but our relationship with it is trash 
by Maikel Kuijpers, 2020

Plastic is a Brilliant Material_Maikel Kuijpers

Support Structures is a manual for what bears, sustains, and props, for those things that encourage, care for, and assist; for that which advocates, articulates; for what stands behind, frames, and maintains: it is a manual for those things that give support.

Support Structures 
by Celine Condorelli, 2009

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One of the first websites tracing stories connected to garments. Worn Relics was an interactive online archive in which the stories and memories attached to garments can be collected and shared. The project explored the idea that clothing acquires value over time through being worn. A true relic.

Worn Relics 
by Ruby Hoette, 2016-2018

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The Good Ancestor reveals six profound ways in which we can all learn to think long-term, exploring uniquely human talents like ‘cathedral thinking’ that expand our time horizons and sharpen our foresight. Drawing on radical innovations from around the world, Krznaric celebrates the time rebels who are reinventing democracy, culture and economics so that we all have the chance to become good ancestors and create a better tomorrow.

The Good Ancestor: A Radical Prescription for Long-Term Thinking 
by Roman Krznaric

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In this book, Ileen Montijn informs us about the care and craftsmanship that was spent on clothes in times ‘something new’ was still a rare luxury.

Tot op de Draad. De vele levens van oude kleren. 
by Ileen Montijn, 2017

Ileen Montijn_Tot op de Draad

In this essay, scholar Steven J. Jackson, ‘asks what happens when we take erosion, breakdown, and decay, rather than novelty, growth, and progress as our starting points in thinking through the nature, use, and effects of information technology and new media.’ Of course, these conditions should be the starting point in our thinking about the nature of everything, since things break as often as they are invented.

Rethinking Repair 
By Steven J. Jackson

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From buildings to bridges, from factories to family homes, we humans are notorious for neglecting routine maintenance. In this surprisingly hopeful book, two historians explain why our distaste for maintenance is both understandable and destructive, and what we can do about it.

The Innovation Delusion. How Our Obsession with the New Has Disrupted the Work That Matters Most 
by Lee Vinsel and Andrew L. Russell

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To most of us, the idea of ownership seems natural. At the same, for many things it's not at all clear who owns it, and why – and the rules of ownership change all the time, as these two law scholars show.