Title: A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America
Author: Lizabeth Cohen
Year of Publication: 2003
Thesis:
Argues that the roots of the Consumer Republic, a term she coined to describe the post-WWII shift to mass consumerism as a solution to right the U.S. economy involving the cooperation of a cadre of government and private entities, can be found in the Progressive Era and again in the 1930s as FDR's responses to the Great Depression emphasized government action to spur the economy. This fusing of consumers and citizens would, in theory, also provide a socially harmonious, egalitarian society full of prosperity. She argues, particularly for African Americans, this was an unfulfilled promise, and locates the GI Bill, discrimination in purchasing single-familiy homes, white flight into from cities into segregated suburbs that relied on property and local taxes to fund services, as main contributor to that inequity.
Time: 1930-1970s, then forward to 2000s
Geography: U.S., D.C., but mostly NJ
Organization:
Cover
About the Author
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
- Author's personal history of jumping from suburban house to house in increasingly upward mobility and increasing property taxes in order to provide for local services.
- Notes two African American families who purchased homes on the outskirts, development reaching them (this is interesting - same deal in South Palo Alto)
- She worked in Shirley Chisholm's campaign - pretty neat!
- See this sectioon for historiography, arguments, chapter summaries.
Part One.
THE ORIGINS OF THE POSTWAR CONSUMERS' REPUBLIC
1. DEPRESSION: Rise of the Citizen Consumer
2. WAR: Citizen Consumers Do Battle on the Home Front
- See here for how white women managed white, middle-class homes and how African Americans pushed against exclusion from the ability to consume equally.
Part Two.
THE BIRTH OF THE CONSUMERS' REPUBLIC
This is the ideology she believes won out: "entrusted the private mass consumption marketplace, supported by government resources, with delivering not only economic prosperity but also loftier social and political ambitions for a more equal, free, and democratic nation." (return for page #)
3. RECONVERSION: The Emergence of the Consumers' Republic
- GI Bill & collective bargaining
4. REBELLION: Forcing Open the Doors of Public Accommodations
- Focus on African Americans
Part Three.
THE LANDSCAPE OF MASS CONSUMPTION
5. RESIDENCE: Inequality in Mass Suburbia
- Suburbanization patterns & inequality
- Shopping centers stress family-owned businesses and displace geography.
- State legal cases affecting freedom of speech on private property
6. COMMERCE: Reconfiguring Community Marketplaces
Part Four.
THE POLITICAL CULTURE OF MASS CONSUMPTION
7. CULTURE: Segmenting the Mass
- Advertising segmentation - different products for different market segments or same products advertised differently. Political campaigns utilize this strategy as well.
8. POLITICS: Purchasers Politicized
Epilogue
Notes
Acknowledgments
Copyright
Type:
Methods:
Sources: Material culture, legal cases
Historiography:
In the prologue, she looks at historiographical and historical shifts at the same time, comparing her own book, where she found some cause to celebrate a very tentative class solidarity in the CIO in Chicago, to Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class, who found elite taste governing burgeoning middle-class desire, to Simon Patten, who notes the satisfaction immigrant communities derived from purchasing power. Proceeds through a litany of critiques of mass consumption during the post-WWII period.
Keywords:
Citizen Consumer - New Deal/WWI period - consumers and gov't as allies - consume to preserve democracy and rights of consumers
Purchaser Consumer - Same period, but stresses self-interest.
Purchaser as Citizen - Serving oneself as serving the national interest
Consumerized Republic - where people come to expect the gov't to serve them personally over whatever they believe is the "common good."
First-wave consumer movement - Progressive Era
Third-wave consumer movement - 1960s-70s - Republic's promises failing, even though the consumer still considered important
Themes:
Critiques:
Questions:
Quotes:
Notes:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?161424-1/a-consumers-republic-politics-mass-consumption
Very well-written and informative prologue.