Women and Mass Consumer Society in Postwar France
Cambridge University Press, 4/7/2011
EAN 9781107001350, ISBN10: 1107001358
Hardcover, 274 pages, 23.1 x 15.5 x 2.5 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
Women and Mass Consumer Society in Postwar France examines the emergence of a citizen consumer role for women during postwar modernization and reconstruction in France, integrating the history of economic modernization with that of women and the family. This role both celebrated the power of the woman consumer and created a gendered form of citizenship that did not disrupt the sexual hierarchy of home, polity and marketplace. Redefining needs and renegotiating concepts of taste, value and thrift, women and their families drove mass consumer society through their demands and purchases at the same time that their very need to consume came to define them.
Introduction
1. Consumers for the nation
women, politics, and citizenship
2. The productivity drive in the home and gaining comfort on credit
3. For better and for worse
marriage and family in the consumer society
4. 'Can a man with a refrigerator make a revolution?'
redefining class in the postwar years
5. The salon des arts ménagers
learning to consume in postwar France
Epilogue.
Advance praise: 'This impressive study fills an important gap in the history of post-World War II economic and social recovery by expertly analyzing the contribution of women's consumption and consumer advocacy to the 'trentes glorieuses' of French economic growth between 1945 and 1975. In this fascinating story, Pulju connects data on the expansion of credit and the production and purchase of household appliances to gender and class differences. She has brilliantly blended the analysis of quantitative data with the views of economists and planners, sociologists' surveys, popular novels, and articles from women's magazines, among other sources.' Laura Levine Frader, Northeastern University