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.

Rebecca J. Pulju (Author)

9781107650886, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 17 October 2013

276 pages, 5 b/w illus. 5 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.41 kg

'The book is engagingly written and will appeal to a wide range of readers, including, but not limited to students and scholars of post-war France. The epilogue, which situates the study in the context of current debates on the crisis and debt and consumer credit, opens a comparative discussion of class and class identities in contemporary France and the US, and broadens the book's import and appeal.' Gill Allwood, European History Quarterly

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.

Subject Areas: Gender studies: women [JFSJ1], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], European history [HBJD]