Frank Trentmann, Empire of things: How we became a world of consumers, from the fifteenth century to the twenty-first.

Trentmann (pp. 427) cites Becker for "the extension of economic theory to marriage, divorce and childrearing" at a time when "the treatment of households as units of production and consumption" was one part of a broader shift towards treating consumers as "miniature businessmen" (p. 427). Trentmann is strikingly fond of pointing out that Marx himself was addicted to consumption. Pepe, Tommaso Frank Trentmann, Empire of things: How we became a world of consumers, from the fifteenth century to the twenty-first. [Extracted from the article]