This innovative, research-based book presents a positive critique of the co-operative alternative to emerging capitalist forms of mass consumption in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This alternative was embedded in the culture of the movement and Peter Gurney provides a full analysis of that culture - its strategy and ambition, social and educational forms, internationalism and historical consciousness.
This volume provides a new study on the Co-operative Movement's engagement with film for educational, cultural and publicity purposes. It provides insights into the political and commercial use of cinema in the 20th century and significantly extends our understanding of the achievements of workers' cinema in Britain.
Objects and commodities have frequently been studied to assess their position within consumer - or material - culture, but all too rarely have scholars examined the politics that lie behind that culture. This book fills the gap and explores the political and state structures that have shaped the consumer and the nature of his or her consumption. From medieval sumptuary laws to recent debates in governments about consumer protection, consumption has always been seen as a highly political act that must be regulated, directed or organized according to the political agendas of various groups. An internationally renowned group of experts looks at the emergence of the rational consuming individual in modern economic thought, the moral and ideological values consumers have attached to their relationships with commodities, and how the practices and theories of consumer citizenship have developed alongside and within the expanding state. How does consumer identity become available to people and how do they use it? How is consumption negotiated in a dictatorship? Are material politics about state politics, consumer politics, or the relationship between these and consumer practices?From the specifics of the politics of consumption in the French Revolution - what was the status of rum? How complicated did a vinegar recipe have to be before the resultant product qualified as 'luxury'? - to the highly contentious twentieth-century debates over American political economy, this original book traces the relationships among political cultures, consumers and citizenship from the eighteenth century to the present.
The co-operative movement has played a notable role in the retail, wholesale, productive, political, educational and cultural life of Britain. As a movement it has consciously represented consumer interests and has carried out work in the arena of consumer protection. However, its study has suffered relative neglect when compared to research into the Labour Party, trade unions and the wider politics of retail and consumption. This book reassesses the impact of the co-operative movement on various communities in Britain during the period 1914-1960, providing a comprehensive account of the grass roots influence of co-operatives during both war and peace. This is a national study with a local dimension. It considers how national directives and perspectives were locally applied, if indeed they were applicable within the context of individual societies. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of the co-operative movement by examining various societies in England, Scotland and Wales. Particular attention is paid to the midlands, due to the movement's expansion here during the interwar period, with consideration also given to comparative developments in Europe. The author explores: the movement's relationship with other labour organizations; its cultural and social aspects (including the role sport played in co-operative societies); the politicization of the movement and local response to the formation of the Co-operative Party; the education of co-operators; what co-operative membership entailed and how co-operative ideology was expressed; the economic impact membership could have on families (including the provision of financial assistance and credit); and the co-operative movement's development alongside consumer activism. The book is a major national study of the growth of Co-operation during this crucial period of British social, economic and consumer history. Given the few modern scholarly works on Co-operation, it is a timely and much needed reassessment.
This book is the first comprehensive history of consumerism as an organised social and political movement. Matthew Hilton offers a groundbreaking account of consumer movements, ideologies and organisations in twentieth-century Britain. He argues that in organisations such as the Co-operative movement and the Consumers' Association individual concern with what and how we spend our wages led to forms of political engagement too often overlooked in existing accounts of twentieth-century history. He explores how the consumer and consumerism came to be regarded by many as a third force in society with the potential to free politics from the perceived stranglehold of the self-interested actions of employers and trade unions. Finally he recovers the visions of countless consumer activists who saw in consumption a genuine force for liberation for women, the working class and new social movements as well as a set of ideas often deliberately excluded from more established political organisations.
Co-operatives provide a different approach to organizing business through their ideals of member ownership and democratic practice. Every co-operative member has an equal vote regardless of his or her own personal capital investment. The contemporary significance of co-operatives was highlighted by the United Nations declaration of 2012 as the International Year of Co-operatives. This book provides an international perspective on the development of co-operatives since the mid-nineteenth century, exploring the economic, political, and social factors that explain their varying fortunes and transformation into different forms. By looking at what co-operatives are; how they have changed; the developments as well as the persecutions of the co-operative movement; and how it is an important force in promoting development and self-sufficiency in non-industrialized areas, this book provides valuable insight not only to academics, but also to practitioners and policy makers.
The study of consumption and its relationship to cultural and social values has become a vibrant and important field in recent years. Hitherto however, relatively few detailed and full length works on this topic have been published. In what will become a seminal volume, this book examines retail selling in various historical contexts and locations, as both an activity at once 'mundane' and almost universal. The book introduces the reader to the existing literature relevant to the subject; and explores the widespread perceptions of moral ambiguity surrounding the practice of selling consumer goods - ranging from concerns about the adulteration of goods, to fears about sharp practice on the part of retailers - and places such concerns in the context of wider societal values and ideas. The ambivalence towards retail selling and sellers is also a central focus of the collection, focussing on the attempts by retailers to develop selling techniques and successful practices of salesmanship, and at the same time establish widely-shared understandings of 'good' retailing. The book also delves into the more dubious practices of retail selling, including practices on the margin of legality, the issue of credit and changing attitudes towards debt. Uniquely the book examines how sales techniques relate to the wider context of a whole shopping 'experience' or shopping environment. Taken as a whole, this volume will provide a first port of call for students, researchers and others interested in exploring consumer cultures, and the cultural norms and practices involved in the sale of consumer goods in various historical periods and geographical contexts.
The history of the voluntary sector in British towns and cities has received increasing scholarly attention in recent years. Nevertheless, whilst there have been a number of valuable contributions looking at issues such as charity as a key welfare provider, charity and medicine, and charity and power in the community, there has been no book length exploration of the role and position of the recipient. By focusing on the recipients of charity, rather than the donors or institutions, this volume tackles searching questions of social control and cohesion, and the relationship between providers and recipients in a new and revealing manner. It is shown how these issues changed over the course of the nineteenth century, as the frontier between the state and the voluntary sector shifted away from charity towards greater reliance on public finance, workers' contributions, and mutual aid. In turn, these new sources of assistance enriched civil society, encouraging democratization, empowerment and social inclusion for previously marginalized members of the community. The book opens with an introduction that locates medicine, charity and mutual aid within their broad historiographical and urban contexts. Twelve archive-based, inter-related chapters follow. Their main chronological focus is the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which witnessed such momentous changes in the attitudes to, and allocation of, charity and poor relief. However, individual chapters on the early modern period, the eighteenth century and the aftermath of the Second World War provide illuminating context and help ensure that the volume provides a systematic overview of the subject that will be of interest to social, urban, and medical historians.
In twentieth-century Britain, consumerism increasingly defined and redefined individual and social identities. New types of consumers emerged: the idealized working-class consumer, the African consumer and the teenager challenged the prominent position of the middle and upper-class female shopper. Linking politics and pleasure, Consuming Behaviours explores how individual consumers and groups reacted to changes in marketing, government control, popular leisure and the availability of consumer goods.From football to male fashion, tea to savings banks, leading scholars consider a wide range of products, ideas and services and how these were marketed to the British public through periods of imperial decline, economic instability, war, austerity and prosperity. The development of mass consumer society in Britain is examined in relation to the growing cultural hegemony and economic power of the United States, offering comparisons between British consumption patterns and those of other nations.Bridging the divide between historical and cultural studies approaches, Consuming Behaviours discusses what makes British consumer culture distinctive, while acknowledging how these consumer identities are inextricably a product of both Britain’s domestic history and its relationship with its Empire, with Europe and with the United States.
A comparative analysis of social change, democratization, and the development of modern party politics in Britain and Sweden during the period 1880-1930, this book presents the similarities of political changes in these two countries at this time and also in the wider European context, with particular reference to the emergence of social democracy as a political current.
