Women and Consumer Culture
During and after the First World War, prices in Canada rose faster than wages. Women’s organizations, novelists, and unemployed workers all responded, in different ways, to the rise of mass consumption. This research follows the history of Canadian consumer culture across the twentieth century. It asks who set the terms on which households were provisioned, how people answered as consumers and citizens, and what their answers reveal about class, gender, and nation. Research on the department stores themselves is in Retail. See also Essays.
Book
Purchasing Power: Women and the Rise of Canadian Consumer Culture. University of Toronto Press, 2020. Winner of the 2021 City of Regina Book Award.
What Canadians bought, and refused to buy, was a form of political action. Across the twentieth century, manufacturers, retailers, and governments set the prices and terms on which women provisioned their households. Drawing on the records of women’s organizations across the country, this book shows how settler women answered by organizing as consumers, and used their purchasing power for public advocacy and cultural change.
Research Articles
-
2014Histoire sociale / Social History 47, no. 93 (2014): 111–38. DOI: 10.1353/his.2014.0002 · [Full text: pending clearance]During and after the First World War, prices rose faster than wages. This article shows how the women who wrote for Woman’s Century answered by pressing manufacturers, retailers, and the state on behalf of Canadian households, even while their overall approach to consumer issues remained conservative.
-
2011International Journal of Canadian Studies 43, no. 1 (2011): 165–88. DOI: 10.7202/1009459ar Open AccessEnglish Canadian novelists between 1890 and 1940 wrote about mass consumption as a moral problem. This article asks what their anxieties show about class, gender, and national identity.
-
2003Labour / Le travail 52, no. 2 (2003): 181–206. DOI: 10.2307/25149387 Open AccessThis article argues that Canadian capitalism cannot be understood without its consumers, and sets out how historians might study them.
-
1999Manitoba History, no. 36 (Autumn/Winter 1998–99): 37–40. Open AccessDuring the Depression, unemployed workers in Brandon, Manitoba published their own newspaper. This article shows how they used it to claim rights as consumers and citizens.
Book Reviews
-
2019Review of Bettina Liverant, Buying Happiness: The Emergence of Consumer Consciousness in English CanadaAmerican Review of Canadian Studies 49, no. 2 (2019): 365–367. [Full text: pending clearance]
-
2016Review of Douglas McCalla, Consumers in the Bush: Shopping in Rural Upper CanadaCanadian Historical Review 97, no. 3 (2016): 449–452. [Full text: pending clearance]
-
2014Review of Graham Broad, A Small Price to Pay: Consumer Culture on the Canadian Home Front, 1939–45Labour / Le Travail 74, no. 1 (2014): 357–358. [Full text: pending clearance]
-
2012Review of Kate Haulman, The Politics of Fashion in Eighteenth Century AmericaJournal of Consumer Culture 12, no. 3 (2012): 371–373. DOI: 10.1177/1469540512456935 · [Full text: pending clearance]
-
2006Review Essay: “Suburbanization and Mass Culture in North America”Labour / Le travail 57, no. 1 (2006): 135–44. Open Access
How to Cite
Belisle, Donica. “Women and Consumer Culture.” Donica Belisle. donicabelisle.ca/consumer-culture.html. Accessed