One of the reasons this area is so "hot" right now in history, at least,
is the issue of "modernity".  As the modern gives way to the post-modern
(under way for some time, or course, but perhaps completed by the fall of the
Soviet Union) modernism will come under very heavy examination.  This area
can be a fruitful area of historical, economic, and archeaological cross-
fertilization.
 
One of the kinds of problems I see being investigated in this way is the
issue of standardization within the material culture.  How extensive was it?
Was it possible to be modern and hold to a craft model of manufacture, or
to be modern while rejecting labor-saving appliances for a Taylorization of
housework?  Getting a better sense of the diffusion of goods which allow
us to test the implications of the theories of economists and historians
of the 1920's and '30's.
 
Kenneth Gauck
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