Pub Date : 2019-09-02DOI: 10.1080/2373518X.2019.1703321
J. Dixon
ABSTRACT Although toyshops survived in name, eighteenth-century toyshops were retail environments distinct to that period, situated alongside other luxury retailers in many of Britain’s urban centres. They sold a range of adornments and collectibles, but the repeated referral to their contents as ‘curiosities’ raises questions as to how toyshops related to other spaces associated with curious articles, such as cabinets of curiosity. As retail sites, toyshops were part of consumer changes, whereas cabinets housed collectibles more associated with enlightened enquiry, so are often separated in the historiography. This survey considers toyshops in London and Birmingham, both in what they sold and their approaches to displaying and promoting these goods, in relation to the contents and experience in cabinets. This juxtaposes two forms of acquisition, collecting and consumption, and situates objects associated with knowledge acquisition and ‘trifling’ in the same discussion. Furthermore, the increasing emphasis on polite shopping is considered with reference to continuing requirements for attracting custom, which could be enhanced through exciting curiosity.
{"title":"The toyshop, the cabinet, and eighteenth-century curiosity","authors":"J. Dixon","doi":"10.1080/2373518X.2019.1703321","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2373518X.2019.1703321","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Although toyshops survived in name, eighteenth-century toyshops were retail environments distinct to that period, situated alongside other luxury retailers in many of Britain’s urban centres. They sold a range of adornments and collectibles, but the repeated referral to their contents as ‘curiosities’ raises questions as to how toyshops related to other spaces associated with curious articles, such as cabinets of curiosity. As retail sites, toyshops were part of consumer changes, whereas cabinets housed collectibles more associated with enlightened enquiry, so are often separated in the historiography. This survey considers toyshops in London and Birmingham, both in what they sold and their approaches to displaying and promoting these goods, in relation to the contents and experience in cabinets. This juxtaposes two forms of acquisition, collecting and consumption, and situates objects associated with knowledge acquisition and ‘trifling’ in the same discussion. Furthermore, the increasing emphasis on polite shopping is considered with reference to continuing requirements for attracting custom, which could be enhanced through exciting curiosity.","PeriodicalId":36537,"journal":{"name":"History of Retailing and Consumption","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/2373518X.2019.1703321","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60101685","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-09-02DOI: 10.1080/2373518X.2019.1703320
Ilja Van Damme
ABSTRACT This new special issue on consumption and shopping practices in the eighteenth-century, takes further steps in reinterpreting the Enlightenment period in north-western Europe. The five papers assembled here will take the reader in new and often exciting directions with a shared concern to uncover under-studied source material and a willingness to explore and thematize shopping and consumption from a fine-grained and detailed historical perspective. The commodity culture of the Enlightenment will be analyzed to discover how it was embodied, enacted and perceived in its own time and context. In what follows, the reader will be introduced to toy- and bookshops in Enlightenment England; the role of provincial fairs; the way illicit goods were instrumental in tying consumer and retailers together in late eighteenth century Sweden; and, finally, learn more about subsequent phases of regulation and deregulation of the Viennese food markets around 1800. The following articles make the important implicit claim that shopping cultures in the Enlightenment worked ‘differently’, according to other cultural value schemes, conventions and norms than our own. These often-hidden cultural contexts remain in dire need to be resuscitated by uncovering new sources, doing careful methodological analysis, and by creatively connecting new findings to already existing knowledge.
{"title":"Reinterpreting shopping in the Enlightenment: retail practices, consumer experiences, governance","authors":"Ilja Van Damme","doi":"10.1080/2373518X.2019.1703320","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2373518X.2019.1703320","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This new special issue on consumption and shopping practices in the eighteenth-century, takes further steps in reinterpreting the Enlightenment period in north-western Europe. The five papers assembled here will take the reader in new and often exciting directions with a shared concern to uncover under-studied source material and a willingness to explore and thematize shopping and consumption from a fine-grained and detailed historical perspective. The commodity culture of the Enlightenment will be analyzed to discover how it was embodied, enacted and perceived in its own time and context. In what follows, the reader will be introduced to toy- and bookshops in Enlightenment England; the role of provincial fairs; the way illicit goods were instrumental in tying consumer and retailers together in late eighteenth century Sweden; and, finally, learn more about subsequent phases of regulation and deregulation of the Viennese food markets around 1800. The following articles make the important implicit claim that shopping cultures in the Enlightenment worked ‘differently’, according to other cultural value schemes, conventions and norms than our own. These often-hidden cultural contexts remain in dire need to be resuscitated by uncovering new sources, doing careful methodological analysis, and by creatively connecting new findings to already existing knowledge.","PeriodicalId":36537,"journal":{"name":"History of Retailing and Consumption","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/2373518X.2019.1703320","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41553054","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-09-02DOI: 10.1080/2373518X.2019.1703323
Anna Knutsson
ABSTRACT This article looks at how contraband was retailed in Sweden between the 1760s and the 1800s and explores how widespread this trade was. It draws on material from the Swedish customs office court records and explores three different retailing channels for contraband that emerge from the material – pedlars, fairs and shops. Officially, these retail outlets were quite distinct from each other, governed by strict regulations as to what and how wares should be traded. This article posits that through the support of their consumers retailers managed to break free from the trade regulations and were able to expand their stock with foreign illegal wares, leading to the dissemination of contraband across the Swedish realm.
{"title":"Clandestine commerce: retailing contraband textiles in late eighteenth-century Sweden","authors":"Anna Knutsson","doi":"10.1080/2373518X.2019.1703323","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2373518X.2019.1703323","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article looks at how contraband was retailed in Sweden between the 1760s and the 1800s and explores how widespread this trade was. It draws on material from the Swedish customs office court records and explores three different retailing channels for contraband that emerge from the material – pedlars, fairs and shops. Officially, these retail outlets were quite distinct from each other, governed by strict regulations as to what and how wares should be traded. This article posits that through the support of their consumers retailers managed to break free from the trade regulations and were able to expand their stock with foreign illegal wares, leading to the dissemination of contraband across the Swedish realm.","PeriodicalId":36537,"journal":{"name":"History of Retailing and Consumption","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/2373518X.2019.1703323","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60101729","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-05-04DOI: 10.1080/2373518X.2019.1642565
G. Warnaby
ABSTRACT This paper analyses ground floor retail occupancy trends in Barton Arcade in Manchester, UK, from its construction in the 1870s to the present. The paper begins by discussing the development of arcades and acknowledges their importance as a retail built form, before discussing their relative demise in the twentieth century. Analysis of occupancy data from Slater’s/Kelly’s Directories (1876–1965) and Goad plans (1967 onwards) reveal significant continuities in occupancy, as well as trends towards an experiential orientation of the retail activity within the arcade, which suggests that an arcade which was perceived in the mid-1980s to have little future might have successfully found a new lease of life. The paper concludes by discussing the implications for a continuing contemporary role for Victorian Arcades such as the Barton Arcade, and for taking a microhistorical perspective in the study of retail history.
{"title":"The Victorian arcade as contemporary retail form?","authors":"G. Warnaby","doi":"10.1080/2373518X.2019.1642565","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2373518X.2019.1642565","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper analyses ground floor retail occupancy trends in Barton Arcade in Manchester, UK, from its construction in the 1870s to the present. The paper begins by discussing the development of arcades and acknowledges their importance as a retail built form, before discussing their relative demise in the twentieth century. Analysis of occupancy data from Slater’s/Kelly’s Directories (1876–1965) and Goad plans (1967 onwards) reveal significant continuities in occupancy, as well as trends towards an experiential orientation of the retail activity within the arcade, which suggests that an arcade which was perceived in the mid-1980s to have little future might have successfully found a new lease of life. The paper concludes by discussing the implications for a continuing contemporary role for Victorian Arcades such as the Barton Arcade, and for taking a microhistorical perspective in the study of retail history.","PeriodicalId":36537,"journal":{"name":"History of Retailing and Consumption","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/2373518X.2019.1642565","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41715093","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-05-04DOI: 10.1080/2373518X.2019.1642566
Leif Runefelt
ABSTRACT The article discusses two elusive components in the construction of bourgeois and middle class femininity in Sweden, 1870–1914: the corset and the mirror. Two popular genres of images are contrasted: images of corsets in Swedish fashion advertisements, and images of corsets and undergarments in Swedish fashion magazines. While fashion advertisements in general copied fashion magazine images, they chose a different path in regard of the corset and the mirror. The two objects, albeit important parts of the period’s fashion, are made invisible in fashion magazines while clearly visualized in the advertisements. The purpose of Swedish fashion magazines was not only to present the latest fashion, but also to construct a conception of timeless womanhood well integrated into the predominant ideology of domesticity. Vanity, gossip, and erotic desires were staple goods of traditional misogyny and were hardly possible to express in fashion magazines. Advertising on the other hand communicated with the female consumer as an individual and presented her as a vain, sexual and emotional creature – without condemning her at the same time. Fashion advertisements emancipated, clearly not woman, but fashion itself, from the morals of domesticity.
{"title":"The corset and the mirror. Fashion and domesticity in Swedish advertisements and fashion magazines, 1870–1914","authors":"Leif Runefelt","doi":"10.1080/2373518X.2019.1642566","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2373518X.2019.1642566","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The article discusses two elusive components in the construction of bourgeois and middle class femininity in Sweden, 1870–1914: the corset and the mirror. Two popular genres of images are contrasted: images of corsets in Swedish fashion advertisements, and images of corsets and undergarments in Swedish fashion magazines. While fashion advertisements in general copied fashion magazine images, they chose a different path in regard of the corset and the mirror. The two objects, albeit important parts of the period’s fashion, are made invisible in fashion magazines while clearly visualized in the advertisements. The purpose of Swedish fashion magazines was not only to present the latest fashion, but also to construct a conception of timeless womanhood well integrated into the predominant ideology of domesticity. Vanity, gossip, and erotic desires were staple goods of traditional misogyny and were hardly possible to express in fashion magazines. Advertising on the other hand communicated with the female consumer as an individual and presented her as a vain, sexual and emotional creature – without condemning her at the same time. Fashion advertisements emancipated, clearly not woman, but fashion itself, from the morals of domesticity.","PeriodicalId":36537,"journal":{"name":"History of Retailing and Consumption","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/2373518X.2019.1642566","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43645430","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-05-04DOI: 10.1080/2373518X.2019.1611163
J. Regan
ABSTRACT This article looks at the advertising of the carriage trade in the United States during the Gilded Age. The trade’s changing products and its expanding markets helped define the advertising employed to reach diverse consumers. The article also gives a brief history of the Studebaker Brothers Company and its advertisements, as well as looking at some early automobile advertising from several companies. The carriage trade in the United States, through industrial manufacturing techniques, created a consumer product that needed to find its market. To secure a place for carriages in this new consumer society, manufacturers and distributors used advertising, as they would later for the automobiles that were to replace them. The article includes descriptions of carriage and automobile ads, representing a range of business, retail, and lifestyle publications and their customers.
{"title":"Need to necessity: carriage advertising in the Gilded Age","authors":"J. Regan","doi":"10.1080/2373518X.2019.1611163","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2373518X.2019.1611163","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article looks at the advertising of the carriage trade in the United States during the Gilded Age. The trade’s changing products and its expanding markets helped define the advertising employed to reach diverse consumers. The article also gives a brief history of the Studebaker Brothers Company and its advertisements, as well as looking at some early automobile advertising from several companies. The carriage trade in the United States, through industrial manufacturing techniques, created a consumer product that needed to find its market. To secure a place for carriages in this new consumer society, manufacturers and distributors used advertising, as they would later for the automobiles that were to replace them. The article includes descriptions of carriage and automobile ads, representing a range of business, retail, and lifestyle publications and their customers.","PeriodicalId":36537,"journal":{"name":"History of Retailing and Consumption","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/2373518X.2019.1611163","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43169977","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-05-02DOI: 10.1080/2373518X.2019.1611164
K. Hunter
ABSTRACT The First World War was a complex moment in the history of dress and garment manufacture. Materials and textile production were diverted largely to war manufacturing, and the meanings of clothing became caught up in particular notions of loyalty and patriotism. One change in dress that has received little attention was the growth of the fur garment and trim industry in these years of fashion austerity. New Zealand provides a fascinating case study of the blossoming of the ‘new world’ fur trade and garment industry from 1914 because, despite its small size and remoteness from Britain and Europe, it became an important player in the international fur trade and the democratization of fur that occurred in these years. This article examines three facets of New Zealand’s fur trade that illuminate the complex forces of war, ecology, and the meanings of buying and wearing clothing in this particular trade at this particular time.
{"title":"Furs in early twentieth-century New Zealand: ecology, war and fashion to the 1930s","authors":"K. Hunter","doi":"10.1080/2373518X.2019.1611164","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2373518X.2019.1611164","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The First World War was a complex moment in the history of dress and garment manufacture. Materials and textile production were diverted largely to war manufacturing, and the meanings of clothing became caught up in particular notions of loyalty and patriotism. One change in dress that has received little attention was the growth of the fur garment and trim industry in these years of fashion austerity. New Zealand provides a fascinating case study of the blossoming of the ‘new world’ fur trade and garment industry from 1914 because, despite its small size and remoteness from Britain and Europe, it became an important player in the international fur trade and the democratization of fur that occurred in these years. This article examines three facets of New Zealand’s fur trade that illuminate the complex forces of war, ecology, and the meanings of buying and wearing clothing in this particular trade at this particular time.","PeriodicalId":36537,"journal":{"name":"History of Retailing and Consumption","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/2373518X.2019.1611164","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47705243","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-04-19DOI: 10.1080/2373518X.2019.1600295
Sofia Murhem, Lars-Olov Karlsson, R. Nilsson, Göran Ulväng
ABSTRACT In this article we examine the accuracy of valuations of movable property for a sample of 22 probate inventories from Swedish. The sample comprises a total of 785 probated items which we have been able to match with contemporary auction protocols, giving us an official sales price for each item. This enables us to determine the consistency between the appraisal values in the probates and prevailing market prices, despite the fact that the probated items were invariably second-hand and of uncertain quality, as the comparison can be made for one and the same items. Our results show that probate appraisal values were marked underestimates of contemporary market prices, but also, that they lacked internal consistency. We find a mean undervaluation for probated items of −36 ± 3 percent, but the degree of undervaluation varied both depending on (i) the category of item, (ii) the year of the probate, as well as depending on (iii) the social class of the deceased. Our results apply, first and foremost, for the Swedish counties of Uppland and Södermanland, but as there is no reason to assume that Swedish probate proceedings exhibited significant regional variation, our results are most likely valid for the whole country.
{"title":"Undervaluation in probate inventories probate inventory values and auction protocol market prices in eighteenth and nineteenth century Sweden","authors":"Sofia Murhem, Lars-Olov Karlsson, R. Nilsson, Göran Ulväng","doi":"10.1080/2373518X.2019.1600295","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2373518X.2019.1600295","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this article we examine the accuracy of valuations of movable property for a sample of 22 probate inventories from Swedish. The sample comprises a total of 785 probated items which we have been able to match with contemporary auction protocols, giving us an official sales price for each item. This enables us to determine the consistency between the appraisal values in the probates and prevailing market prices, despite the fact that the probated items were invariably second-hand and of uncertain quality, as the comparison can be made for one and the same items. Our results show that probate appraisal values were marked underestimates of contemporary market prices, but also, that they lacked internal consistency. We find a mean undervaluation for probated items of −36 ± 3 percent, but the degree of undervaluation varied both depending on (i) the category of item, (ii) the year of the probate, as well as depending on (iii) the social class of the deceased. Our results apply, first and foremost, for the Swedish counties of Uppland and Södermanland, but as there is no reason to assume that Swedish probate proceedings exhibited significant regional variation, our results are most likely valid for the whole country.","PeriodicalId":36537,"journal":{"name":"History of Retailing and Consumption","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/2373518X.2019.1600295","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45365654","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-01-02DOI: 10.1080/2373518X.2019.1589860
Anna Zeide
ABSTRACT Food waste and its disposal have long been central problems of food distribution and retailing. The supermarket revolution in the United States, beginning in the 1930s, introduced both new opportunities and new challenges. As American supermarkets grew bigger, they cut losses in some areas, but also saw increasing waste. Operators had to deal with concerns about consumers handling produce, higher aesthetic standards that led stores to discard more edible produce, overstocking, and more trimming with the rise of prepackaging. The growing piles of garbage that the new large supermarkets produced were directed toward one of the methods of disposal that was gaining ground in mid-twentieth century America. Public works and public health officials championed sanitary landfills, hog feeding operations, garbage grinders, and incineration, despite all of the potential costs associated with each method. Heightened awareness of the environmental and public health costs of water and air pollution led citizens and leaders to push back against these disposal systems, often displacing them onto marginalised communities.
{"title":"Grocery garbage: food waste and the rise of supermarkets in the mid-twentieth century United States","authors":"Anna Zeide","doi":"10.1080/2373518X.2019.1589860","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2373518X.2019.1589860","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Food waste and its disposal have long been central problems of food distribution and retailing. The supermarket revolution in the United States, beginning in the 1930s, introduced both new opportunities and new challenges. As American supermarkets grew bigger, they cut losses in some areas, but also saw increasing waste. Operators had to deal with concerns about consumers handling produce, higher aesthetic standards that led stores to discard more edible produce, overstocking, and more trimming with the rise of prepackaging. The growing piles of garbage that the new large supermarkets produced were directed toward one of the methods of disposal that was gaining ground in mid-twentieth century America. Public works and public health officials championed sanitary landfills, hog feeding operations, garbage grinders, and incineration, despite all of the potential costs associated with each method. Heightened awareness of the environmental and public health costs of water and air pollution led citizens and leaders to push back against these disposal systems, often displacing them onto marginalised communities.","PeriodicalId":36537,"journal":{"name":"History of Retailing and Consumption","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/2373518X.2019.1589860","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43319917","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-01-02DOI: 10.1080/2373518X.2019.1589857
C. Deutsch
ABSTRACT The history of consumption in the United States has long been marked by its political nature though historians have struggled to explain the politics of consumption and food retailing during the 1950s, when the notion of abundance became synonymous with the United States. This article explores that history by examining the passage of the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act of 1958. Though not a major bill, it enshrined animals’ right to die without pain and marked a triumph of animal welfare groups’ political activism. By exploring the fight between proponents and opponents of humane slaughter, the nature of consumer politics in the 1950s comes into focus. Consumers fought to force the meat commodity chain to reflect their values as Americans who saw themselves as the most modern and moral nation in the world. Opponents tried to block a mandatory humane slaughter law. Ultimately, proponents succeeded because they framed humane slaughter as an issue of consumer morality. Consumers used the political system to remake a portion of the food economy in order to make food production and retail systems reflect their values.
{"title":"‘We dislike to see suffering’: the fight for humane slaughter in the United States in the 1950s","authors":"C. Deutsch","doi":"10.1080/2373518X.2019.1589857","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2373518X.2019.1589857","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The history of consumption in the United States has long been marked by its political nature though historians have struggled to explain the politics of consumption and food retailing during the 1950s, when the notion of abundance became synonymous with the United States. This article explores that history by examining the passage of the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act of 1958. Though not a major bill, it enshrined animals’ right to die without pain and marked a triumph of animal welfare groups’ political activism. By exploring the fight between proponents and opponents of humane slaughter, the nature of consumer politics in the 1950s comes into focus. Consumers fought to force the meat commodity chain to reflect their values as Americans who saw themselves as the most modern and moral nation in the world. Opponents tried to block a mandatory humane slaughter law. Ultimately, proponents succeeded because they framed humane slaughter as an issue of consumer morality. Consumers used the political system to remake a portion of the food economy in order to make food production and retail systems reflect their values.","PeriodicalId":36537,"journal":{"name":"History of Retailing and Consumption","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/2373518X.2019.1589857","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45757079","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：