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 [log in to unmask]