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Sold American
At the turn of the twentieth century, an emerging consumer culture in the United States promoted constant spending to meet material needs and develop social identity and self-cultivation. InSold American, Charles F. McGovern examines the key players active in shaping this cultural evolution: advertisers and consumer advocates. McGovern argues that even though these two professional groups invented radically different models for proper spending, both groups propagated mass consumption as a specifically American social practice and an important element of nationality and citizenship.Advertisers, McGovern shows, used nationalist ideals, icons, and political language to define consumption as the foundation of the pursuit of happiness. Consumer advocates, on the other hand, viewed the market with a republican-inspired skepticism and fought commercial incursions on consumer independence. The result, says McGovern, was a redefinition of the citizen as consumer. The articulation of an \"American Way of Life\" in the Depression and World War II ratified consumer abundance as the basis of a distinct American culture and history.
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Rationed Life
Far from the battlefront, hundreds of thousands of workers toiled in Bohemian factories over the course of World War I, and their lives were inescapably shaped by the conflict. In particular, they faced new and dramatic forms of material hardship that strained social ties and placed in sharp relief the most mundane aspects of daily life, such as when, what, and with whom to eat. This study reconstructs the experience of the Bohemian working class during the Great War through explorations of four basic spheres—food, labor, gender, and protest—that comprise a fascinating case study in early twentieth-century social history.
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Prosperity for all
The history of consumerism is about much more than just shopping. Ever since the eighteenth century, citizen-consumers have protested against the abuses of the market by boycotting products and promoting fair instead of free trade. In recent decades, consumer activism has responded to the challenges of affluence by helping to guide consumers through an increasingly complex and alien marketplace. In doing so, it has challenged the very meaning of consumer society and tackled some of the key economic, social, and political issues associated with the era of globalization.
InProsperity for All, the first international history of consumer activism, Matthew Hilton shows that modern consumer advocacy reached the peak of its influence in the decades after World War II. Growing out of the product-testing activities ofConsumer Reportsand its international counterparts (includingWhich?in the United Kingdom,Que Choisirin France, andTestin Germany), consumerism evolved into a truly global social movement. Consumer unions, NGOs, and individual activists like Ralph Nader emerged in countries around the world-including developing countries in Southeast Asia and Latin America-concerned with creating a more equitable marketplace and articulating a politics of consumption that addressed the needs of both individuals and society as a whole.
Consumer activists achieved many victories, from making cars safer to highlighting the dangers of using baby formula instead of breast milk in countries with no access to clean water. The 1980s saw a reversal in the consumer movement's fortunes, thanks in large part to the rise of an antiregulatory agenda both in the United States and internationally. In the process, the definition of consumerism changed, focusing more on choice than on access. As Hilton shows, this change reflects more broadly on the dilemmas we all face as consumers: Do we want more stuff and more prosperity for ourselves, or do we want others less fortunate to be able to enjoy the same opportunities and standard of living that we do?
Prosperity for Allmakes clear that by abandoning a more idealistic vision for consumer society we reduce consumers to little more than shoppers, and we deny the vast majority of the world's population the fruits of affluence.
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Shopping for Change
Consuming with a conscience is one of the fastest growing forms of political participation worldwide. Every day we make decisions about how to spend our money and, for the socially conscious, these decisions matter. Political consumers \"buy green\" for the environment or they \"buy pink\" to combat breast cancer. They boycott Taco Bell to support migrant workers or Burger King to save the rainforest.
But can we overcome the limitations of consumer identity, the conservative pull of consumer choice, co-optation by corporate marketers, and other pitfalls of consumer activism in order to marshal the possibilities of consumer power? Can we, quite literally, shop for change? Shopping for Change brings together the historical and contemporary perspectives of academics and activists to show readers what has been possible for consumer activists in the past and what might be possible for today's consumer activists.Contributors
Kyle Asquith, University of Windsor; Dawson Barrett, Del Mar College; Lawrence Black, University of York; Madeline Brambilla, Northeastern University; Joshua Carreiro, Springfield Technical Community College, Springfield, MA; H. Louise Davis, Miami University; Jeffrey Demsky, San Bernardino Valley College; Tracey Deutsch, University of Minnesota–Twin Cities; Mara Einstein, Queens College, CUNY; Bart Elmore, University of Alabama; Sarah Elvins, University of Manitoba; Daniel Faber, Northeastern University; Julie Guard, University of Manitoba; Louis Hyman, ILR School, Cornell University; Meredith Katz, Virginia Commonwealth University; Randall Kaufman, Miami Dade College–Homestead Campus; Larry Kirsh, IMR Health Economics, Portland, OR; Katrina Lacher, University of Central Oklahoma; Bettina Liverant, University of Calgary; Amy Lubitow, Portland State University; Robert N. Mayer, University of Utah; Michelle McDonald, Stockton University; Wendy Wiedenhoft Murphy, John Carroll University; Mark W. Robbins, Del Mar College;
Jessica Stewart, Cornell University;Joseph Tohill, York University and Ryerson University; Allison Ward, Queen's University and McMaster University; Philip Wight, Brandeis University
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Domesticating the World
This book boldly unsettles the idea of globalization as a recent phenomenon—and one driven solely by Western interests—by offering a compelling new perspective on global interconnectivity in the nineteenth century. Jeremy Prestholdt examines East African consumers' changing desires for material goods from around the world in an era of sweeping social and economic change. Exploring complex webs of local consumer demands that affected patterns of exchange and production as far away as India and the United States, the book challenges presumptions that Africa's global relationships have always been dictated by outsiders. Full of rich and often-surprising vignettes that outline forgotten trajectories of global trade and consumption, it powerfully demonstrates how contemporary globalization is foreshadowed in deep histories of intersecting and reciprocal relationships across vast distances.
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Soviet Consumer Culture in the Brezhnev Era
After decades of turmoil and trauma, the Brezhnev era brought stability and an unprecedented rise in living standards to the Soviet Union, enabling ordinary people to enjoy modern consumer goods on an entirely new scale. This book analyses the politics and economics of the state's efforts to improve living standards, and shows how mass consumption was often used as an instrument of legitimacy, ideology and modernization. However, the resulting consumer revolution brought its own problems for the socialist regime. Rising well-being and the resulting ethos of consumption altered citizens' relationship with the state and had profound consequences for the communist project.
The book uses a wealth of sources to explore the challenge that consumer modernity was posing to Soviet 'mature socialism' between the mid-1960s and the early 1980s. It combines analysis of economic policy and public debates on consumerism with the stories of ordinary people and their attitudes to fashion, Western goods and the home. The book contests the notion that Soviet consumers were merely passive, abused, eternally queuing victims and that the Brezhnev era was a period of 'stagnation', arguing instead that personal consumption provided the incentive and the space for individuals to connect and interact with society and the regime even before perestroika. This book offers a lively account of Soviet society and everyday life during a period which is rapidly becoming a new frontier of historical research.
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Crime, Gender and Consumer Culture in Nineteenth-Century England
Whilst the actual origins of English consumer culture are a source of much debate, it is
clear that the nineteenth century witnessed a revolution in retailing and consumption.
Mass production of goods, improved transport facilities and more sophisticated sales
techniques brought consumerism to the masses on a scale previously unimaginable. Yet
with this new consumerism came new problems and challenges. Focusing on retailing in
nineteenth-century Britain, this book traces the expansion of commodity culture and a
mass consumer orientated market, and explores the wider social and cultural implications
this had for society. Using trial records, advertisements, newspaper reports,
literature, and popular ballads, it analyses the rise, criticism, and entrenchment of
consumerism by looking at retail changes around the period 1800-1880 and society's
responses to them. By viewing this in the context of what had gone before Professor
Whitlock emphasizes the key role women played in this evolution, and argues that the
dazzling new world of consumption had beginnings that predate the later English, French
and American department store cultures. It also challenges the view that women were
helpless consumers manipulated by merchants' use of colour, light and display into
excessive purchases, or even driven by their desires into acts of theft. With its
interdisciplinary approach drawing on social and economic history, gender studies,
cultural studies and the history of crime, this study asks fascinating questions
regarding the nature of consumer culture and how society reacts to the challenges this
creates.
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The Disneyization of society
′Alan Bryman has expanded on his well-known work on Disney and Disneyization to create a fascinating, highly readable book... This is an important book about a significant social process. And, it manages to be fun, as well!′ - George Ritzer, author of McDonalidization and Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland.
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