Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-qsmjn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-17T03:51:49.406Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE DEATH OF A CONSUMER SOCIETY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2008

Matthew Hilton
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper argues that the meaning of consumer society has changed over the last half century, principally through the prioritisation of choice over access. It does this through an examination of the global consumer movement and a consideration of its successes and failures. It demonstrates that through the movement's own tactics, and the defeats it suffered by opponents of regulation, its earlier emphasis on the right of consumers to enjoy basic needs has given way to a greater focus on choice. Consequently, the changing fortunes of consumer activism around the world both reflect and explain the reorientation of global consumer society over the last few decades.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 18 , December 2008 , pp. 211 - 236
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Neil McKendrick, John Brewer and J. H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialisation of Eighteenth-Century England (1982), 1.

2 Principally, Thirsk, Joan, Economic Policy and Projects: The Development of a Consumer Society in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1978)Google Scholar.

3 See, for instance, Welch, Evelyn, Shopping in the Renaissance: Consumer Cultures in Italy 1400–1600 (New Haven, CT, 2005)Google Scholar; Clunas, Craig, Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China (Cambridge, 1991)Google Scholar.

4 McKendrick et al., Birth of a Consumer Society, 1.

5 Thompson, N., ‘Social Opulence, Private Asceticism: Ideas of Consumption in Early Socialist Thought’, in The Politics of Consumption: Material Culture and Citizenship in Europe and America, ed. Daunton, M. and Hilton, M. (Oxford, 2001), 51–68Google Scholar.

6 C. Gide, Principles of Political Economy (1903), 680; Bonner, A., British Co-operation: The History, Principles and Organisation of the British Co-operative Movement (Manchester, 1961)Google Scholar.

7 Donohue, Kathleen G., Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Idea of the Consumer (Baltimore, 2003)Google Scholar; Ackerman, Frank, ‘Foundations of Economic Theories of Consumption: Overview Essay’, in The Consumer Society, ed. Goodwin, Neva R., Ackerman, Frank and Kiron, David (Washington, DC, 1997), 149–58Google Scholar.

8 Glickman, Lawrence B., A Living Wage: American Workers and the Making of Consumer Society (Ithaca, NY, 1997)Google Scholar; Glickman, Lawrence, ‘Workers of the World, Consume: Ira Steward and the Origins of Labour Consumerism’, International Labour and Working Class History, 52 (1997), 72–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vincent, Julien, ‘The Moral Expertise of the British Consumer, c. 1900: A Debate between the Christian Social Union and the Webbs’, in The Expert Consumer: Associations and Professionals in Consumer Society, ed. Chatriot, Alain, Chessel, Marie-Emmanuelle and Hilton, Matthew (Aldershot, 2006), 37–51Google Scholar; Maud Nathan, The Story of an Epoch-Making Movement (1926), 23–4; Sklar, Kathryn Kish, ‘The Consumer's White Label Campaign of the National Consumer's League, 1898–1918’, in Getting and Spending: European and American Consumer Societies in the Twentieth Century, ed. Strasser, Susan, McGovern, Charles and Judt, Matthias (Cambridge, 1998), 17–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Breckman, Warren, ‘Disciplining Consumption: The Debate on Luxury in Wilhelmine Germany, 1890–1914’, Journal of Social History, 24 (1991), 485–505CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sklar, Kathryn Kish, Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Women's Political Culture, 1830–1900 (New Haven, CT, 1995)Google Scholar; Chessel, Marie-Emmanuelle, ‘Consommation et réforme sociale à la Belle Époque: la conference internationale des ligues socials d'acheteurs en 1908’, Sciences de la Societé, 62 (2004), 45–67Google Scholar.

9 Cohen, Lizabeth, A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York, 2003)Google Scholar.

10 Trumbull, Gunnar, Consumer Capitalism: Politics, Product Markets and Firm Strategy in France and Germany (Ithaca, NY, 2006)Google Scholar; Iselin Theien, ‘Shopping for the “People's Home”: Consumer Planning in Norway and Sweden after the Second World War’, and Katherine Pence, ‘Shopping for an “Economic Miracle”: Gendered Politics of Consumer Citizenship in Divided Germany’, in Chatriot et al., Expert Consumer, 105–20, 137–50; Black, Lawrence, The Political Culture of the Left in Britain, 1951–1964 (Basingstoke, 2003)Google Scholar.

11 de Grazia, Victoria, Irresistible Empire: America's Advance through Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge, MA, 2005)Google Scholar; Kroen, Sheryl, ‘La magie des objets, le Plan Marshall et l'instauration d'une démocratie de consommateurs’, in Au nom du consommateur: consommation et politique en Europe et aux États-Unis au xxe siècle, ed., Chatriot, Alain, Chessel, Marie-Emmanuelle and Hilton, Matthew (Paris, 2005), 80–97Google Scholar; Kroen, Sheryl, ‘Negotiations with the American Way: The Consumer and the Social Contract in Post-War Europe’, in Consuming Cultures, Global Perspective: Historical Trajectories, Transnational Exchanges, ed. Brewer, John and Trentmann, Frank (Oxford, 2006), 251–77Google Scholar.

12 Cohen, A Consumers' Republic; Jacobs, Meg, Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton, NJ, 2005)Google Scholar; Cross, Gary, An All-Consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America (New York, 2000)Google Scholar; Donohue, Freedom from Want.

13 Glickman, Lawrence B., ‘The Strike in the Temple of Consumption: Consumer Activism and Twentieth-Century American Political Culture’, Journal of American History, 88 (2001), 99–128CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mayer, Robert N., The Consumer Movement: Guardians of the Marketplace (Boston, MA, 1989)Google Scholar; Silber, Norman Isaac, Test and Protest: The Influence of Consumers Union (New York, 1983)Google Scholar; Pertschuk, Michael, Revolt against Regulation: The Rise and Pause of the Consumer Movement (Berkeley, CA, 1982)Google Scholar; McGovern, Charles, Sold American: Consumption and Citizenship, 1890–1945 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Encyclopaedia of the Consumer Movement, ed. S. Brobeck, R. N. Mayer and R. O. Herrmann (Santa Barbara, CA, 1997), various entries.

15 Thorelli, Hans B. and Thorelli, Sarah V., Consumer Information Systems and Consumer Policy (Cambridge, MA, 1977), 234Google Scholar.

16 Ibid., 340.

17 Thorelli, Hans B. and Thorelli, Sarah V., Consumer Information Handbook: Europe and North America (New York, 1974), xxivGoogle Scholar.

18 Marx, Capital, i, in The Portable Karl Marx, ed. E. Kamenka (Harmondsworth, 1930), 446–50.

19 Trumbull, Consumer Capitalism; Alain Chatriot, ‘Qui defend le consommateur? Associations, institutions et politiques publiques en France, 1972–2003’, in Chatriot et al., Au nom du consommateur, 165–81; Trumbull, Gunnar, ‘National Varieties of Consumerism’, Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 1 (2006), 77–93Google Scholar; Maclachlan, Patricia L., Consumer Politics in Postwar Japan: The Institutional Boundaries of Citizen Activism (New York, 2002)Google Scholar.

20 Trumbull, Consumer Capitalism, 8–9.

21 Hilton, Matthew, Consumerism in Twentieth-Century Britain: The Search for a Historical Movement (Cambridge, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Mayer, The Consumer Movement, 29, 101; Finch, James E., ‘A History of the Consumer Movement in the United States: Its Literature and Legislation’, Journal of Consumer Studies and Home Economics, 9 (1985), 23–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Landsman, Mark, Dictatorship and Demand: The Politics of Consumerism in East Germany (Cambridge, MA, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Mazurek, Malgorzata and Hilton, Matthew, ‘Consumerism, Solidarity and Communism: Consumer Protection and the Consumer Movement in Poland’, Journal of Contemporary History, 42 (2007), 315–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Beverley Hooper, ‘The consumer citizen in contemporary China’, Working Paper No. 12, Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University, available at: www.ace.lu.se/images/Syd_och_sydostasienstudier/working_papers/Hooper.pdf (accessed Apr. 2007); ‘Complaint Hotline Saves 4.4 Billion Yuan for Consumers during Five Years’, People's Daily, 26 Mar. 2004, available at: http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200403/26/eng20040326_138603.shtml (accessed Apr. 2007); Jing Jian Xiao, ‘Chinese consumer movement’, in Brobeck et al., Encyclopaedia of the Consumer Movement, 104–8; King, Donald B. and Gao, Tong, Consumer Protection in China: Development and Recommendations (Littleton, CO, 1991)Google Scholar; Gao, Tong, ‘Chinese Consumer Protection Philosophy’, Journal of Consumer Policy, 14 (1992), 337–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 International Organisation of Consumers Unions (IOCU), The Consumer and the World of Tomorrow: Report of the Second Conference of the International Organisation of Consumers Union (The Hague, 1962); Roberts, Eirlys, International Organisation of Consumers Unions, 1960–1981 (The Hague, 1981)Google Scholar; Sim, Foo Gaik, IOCU on Record: A Documentary History of the International Organization of Consumers Unions, 1960–1990 (Yonkers, NY, 1991)Google Scholar; IOCU, Programme of First International Meeting on Consumer Testing (The Hague, 1960)Google Scholar.

27 IOCU, Knowledge Is Power: Consumer Goals in the 1970s. Proceedings of the 6th Biennial World Conference of the International Organisation of Consumers Unions (1970), 115–17.

28 IOCU, Consumer Power in the Nineties: Proceedings of the Thirteenth IOCU World Congress (1991), 113.

29 Consumers International, Annual Report, 1999 (1999), 37–41.

30 Gerth, Karl, China Made: Consumer Culture and the Creation of the Nation (Cambridge, MA, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robinson, Michael Edson, Cultural Nationalism in Colonial Korea, 1920–1925 (Seattle, 1988)Google Scholar; Nelson, Laura C., Status, Gender and Consumer Nationalism in South Korea (New York, 2000)Google Scholar; Bayly, C. A., ‘The Origins of Swadeshi (Home Industry): Cloth and Indian Society, 1700–1930’, in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Appadurai, Arjun (Cambridge, 1986)Google Scholar.

31 Fernandez, Josie, ‘Consumer Protection in Asia: The Challenges Ahead’, Journal of Development Communication, 12 (2001), 42–52Google Scholar; Josie Fernandez, ‘Asian-Pacific Consumer Movement’, in Brobeck et al., Encyclopaedia of the Consumer Movement, 38–42; Wood, John T. D., ‘Consumer Protection in the Asian-Pacific Region’, Journal of Consumer Policy, 14 (1991), 99–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 What follows is a summary of my work on Malaysia. Further details can be found in Hilton, Matthew, ‘Social Activism in an Age of Consumption: The Organised Consumer Movement’, Social History, 32 (2007), 121–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘The Consumer Movement and Civil Society in Malaysia’, International Review of Social History, 52 (2007), 373–406.

33 Jacobson, Harold K., Networks of Interdependence: International Organisations and the Global Political System (New York, 1984)Google Scholar.

34 Goldenman, G. and Rengam, S., Problem Pesticides, Pesticide Problems: A Citizens' Action Guide to the International Code of Conduct on the Distribution and Use of Pesticides (Penang, 1988)Google Scholar; Balasubramaniam, K., Health and Pharmaceuticals in Developing Countries: Towards Social Justice and Equity (Penang, 1996)Google Scholar; Sim, Foo Gaik, The Pesticide Poisoning Report: A Survey of Some Asian Countries (Penang, 1985)Google Scholar; Hansen, Michael, Escape from the Pesticide Treadmill: Alternatives to Pesticides in Developing Countries (Penang, 1987)Google Scholar; IOCU and IBFAN, Protecting Infant Health: A Health Workers' Guide to the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes (Penang, 1985)Google Scholar; IBFAN, Breaking the Rules 1991: A Worldwide Report on Violations of the WHO/UNICEF International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes (Penang, 1991)Google Scholar; Charles Medawar, Drugs and World Health: An International Consumer Perspective (1984).

35 IOCU Archive, Kuala Lumpur, Box 61a, File G5a.6, Anwar Fazal, ‘An Outline Strategy for the Promotion and Financing of Consumers’ Organisations in Developing Countries', paper presented to IOCU World Congress, 23–7 Mar. 1975, Sydney, 3.

36 Keck, Margaret E. and Sikkink, Kathryn, Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY, 1998)Google Scholar.

37 IOCU Archive, Box 61a, File G5a.32, Anwar Fazal, ‘Brave and Angry: The International Consumer Movement's Response to MNCs’, paper presented to ASEAN Consumer Protection Seminar, 1–4 Oct. 1980, Quezon City, Philippines, 8.

38 IOCU, Annual Report, 1986, 10; Vernon, Michael J., Evaluation of the Consumer Interpol: A Report to IOCU (Penang: IOCU-ROAP, 1984)Google Scholar; IOCU Archive, Box 17, File B3em, Abrahams, Martin, ‘Consumer Interpol: A Citizen's Action Approach to Police Corporate Dumping of Hazardous Products’, Project Appraisal, 3 (1988), 155–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 IOCU, Report for 1975–1978, 32–43; IOCU, Annual Report, 1979, 21–36; IOCU, Report for 1972–1974, 28–30, 40–5; IOCU, Biennial Report, 1970–1972, 27.

40 Harland, David, ‘The United Nations Guidelines for Consumer Protection’, Journal of Consumer Policy, 10 (1987), 245–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Esther Peterson and Jean M. Halloran, ‘United Nations Consumer Protections’, in Brobeck et al., Encyclopaedia of the Consumer Movement, 581–3.

41 Quoted in Swagler, R., ‘Evolution and Applications of the Term Consumerism: Themes and Variations’, Journal of Consumer Affairs, 28 (1994), 350CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For other definitions see the Oxford English Dictionary; Consumerism: Search for the Consumer Interest, ed. D. A. Aaker and G. S. Day, 3rd edn (Basingstoke, 1978), 2; Y. Gabriel and T. Lang, The Unmanageable Consumer: Contemporary Consumption and its Fragmentation (1995), 7–9.

42 IOCU Archive, Box 71, File H3.1, John F. Kennedy, ‘Special Message to the Congress on Protecting the Consumer Interest’, 15 Mar. 1962.

43 Stephen Weatherill, EC Consumer Law and Policy (1997); Commission of the European Communities, Consumer Protection and Information Policy: Third Report (Luxembourg, 1981)Google Scholar; Commission of the European Communities, Consumer Representation in the European Communities (Luxembourg, 1983)Google Scholar; Commission of the European Communities, Ten Years of Community Consumer Policy: A Contribution to a People's Europe (Luxembourg, 1986)Google Scholar; Economic and Social Consultative Assembly, The Consumer and the Internal Market (Brussels, 1993)Google ScholarPubMed; Consumers in the Europe Group, EU Consumer Protection Policy: A Review of European Union Consumer Programmes, EU Consumer Protection Legislation and European Commission Consumer Initiatives (1999).

44 Interview with Anwar Fazal, 13 Apr. 2004.

45 Finch, ‘A History of the Consumer Movement’; Kansas State University Archive, Dorothy Willner papers, Box 11, Knauer, Virginia H., President's Committee on Consumer Interests and Office of Consumer Affairs: The Years 1969–1977 (Washington, DC, 1977)Google Scholar.

46 Capital Legal Foundation, Abuse of Trust: A Report on Ralph Nader's Network (Chicago, 1982)Google Scholar; Grayson, Melvin J. and Shepard, Thomas R, The Disaster Lobby: Prophets of Ecological Doom and Other Absurdities (Chicago, 1973)Google Scholar; Peterson, Mary Bennett, The Regulated Consumer (Los Angeles, CA, 1971)Google Scholar.

47 Blumenthal, Sidney, The Rise of the Counter-Establishment: From Conservative Ideology to Political Power (New York, 1986)Google Scholar; The Essential Neoconservative Reader, ed. Mark Green (Reading, MA, 1996); Steinfels, Peter, The Neoconservatives: The Men Who Are Changing America's Politics (New York, 1979)Google Scholar; Smith, James Allen, The Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and the Rise of the New Policy Elite (New York, 1991)Google Scholar; Wilcox, Derk Arend, The Right Guide: A Guide to Conservative and Right-of-Centre Organisations (Ann Arbor, MI, 1997)Google Scholar.

48 Schlesinger Library, Harvard University, Esther Peterson Papers, Box 89, Folder 1746: Cohen and Tremaine, Consumer Agency History, 66; Vogel, David, Kindred Strangers: The Uneasy Relationship between Politics and Business in America (Princeton, NJ, 1996)Google Scholar; Wilson, Graham, ‘American Business and Politics’, in Interest Group Politics, ed. Cigler, Allan J. and Loomis, Burdett A. (Washington, DC, 1986), 221–35Google Scholar; Ackard, Patrick J., ‘Corporate Mobilisation and Political Power: The Transformation of US Economic Policy in the 1970s’, American Sociological Review, 57 (1992), 597–615CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clawson, Dan and Clawson, Mary Ann, ‘Reagan or Business? Foundations of the New Conservatism’, in The Structure of Power in America: The Corporate Elite as a Ruling Class, ed. Schwartz, Michael (New York, 1987), 201–17Google Scholar.

49 Richard Berryman and Richard Schifter, ‘A Global Straitjacket’, Regulation, Sept./Oct. 1981, 19–28; Kenneth L. Adelman, ‘Biting the Hand that Cures Them’, Regulation, July/Aug. 1982, 16–18.

50 Adelman, ‘Biting’, 18; Harry Schwartz, ‘The UN System's War on the Drug Industry’, Regulation, July/Aug. 1982, 19–24.

51 Edwards, Lee, The Power of Ideas: The Heritage Foundation at 25 Years (Ottowa, 1997), 77Google Scholar.

52 Pines, Burton Yale, ‘Introduction’, in A World without a U.N.: What would Happen If the U.N. Shut Down, ed. Pines, Burton Yale (Washington, DC, 1984), xGoogle Scholar.

53 Brooks, Roger A., Multinationals: First Victim of the UN War on Free Enterprise (Washington, DC, 1982), 1–3Google Scholar; Anon., ‘Heritage Foundation Slams “Extremist” Consumer Organisations’, Multinational Monitor, 4 (Jan. 1983), 8.

54 Brooks, Multinationals, 19.

55 Ibid., 21.

56 Ibid., 23.

57 Ibid., 24.

58 IOCU Archive, Box 102, File H88.6, telex from US State Department to US Embassies, 26 Mar. 1991.

59 IOCU Archive, Box ‘Council Meetings, 1996–2003’, File CM47/3(v), Global Policy and Campaigns Unit, ‘Summary Progress Report, November 1995–September 1996’.

60 Horowitz, Daniel, The Anxieties of Affluence: Critiques of American Consumer Culture, 1939–1979 (Amherst, MA, 2004)Google Scholar.

61 John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (1958; Penguin edn, 1999), 188.