Expert Consumer

Alain Chatriot and Marie-Emmanuelle Chessel are both researchers at the Centre National pour la Recherche Scientifique (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris), France. Matthew Hilton is Reader in Social History at the University of Birmingham, UK.

• Contents: Introduction, Alain Chatriot, Marie-Emmanuelle Chessel and Matthew Hilton. Part 1 Early Consumer Activism: 'Through the medium of their pockets': sabbatarianism, free produce, non-intercourse and the significance of 'early modern' consumer activism, Lawrence B. Glickman; The moral expertise of the British consumer, c. 1900: a debate between the Christian Social Union and the Webbs, Julien Vincent; Consumers' leagues in France: a transatlantic perspective, Marie-Emmanuelle Chessel. Part 2 Consumer Expertise in War and Peace: Educating consumers, representing consumers: reforming the marketplace through scientific expertise at the Bureau of Home Economics, United States Department of Agriculture, 1923-40, Carolyn M. Goldstein; The enemy within: food, nutrition experts and consumers in French-speaking Switzerland, 1900-46, Joëlle Droux; Shopping for an 'economic miracle': gendered politics of consumer citizenship in divided Germany, Katherine Pence. Part 3 Consumers in the Society of Consumption: Consumers' Associations and the state: protection and defence of the consumer in France, 1950-2000, Alain Chatriot; Shopping for the 'people's home': consumer planning in Norway and Sweden after the Second World War, Iselin Theien; The entrepreneurial ethic and the spirit of consumerism: finances and strategy in the US consumer movement, Robert N. Mayer; Living in the city differently: the birth of new expertise in France in the 1960s and 1970s, Odile Join-Lambert and Yves Lochard; The organised consumer movement since 1945, Matthew Hilton. Index.

’Drawing substantially on primary research, the book provides a tantalizing insight into multiplicity of forms of consumer representation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries...’ Journal of Design History ’The Expert Consumer is a valuable book that should be of particular interest to American readers who want to learn about developments in Western Europe.’ Business History Review