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E-book
Author Goldstein, Carolyn M., 1962- author.

Title Creating consumers : home economists in twentieth-century America / Carolyn M. Goldstein
Published Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2012]

Copies

Description 1 online resource (xi, 412 pages) : illustrations
Series UPCC book collections on Project MUSE. Global cultural studies collection
Contents Cover; Contents; Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1. Envisioning the Rational Consumer, 1900-1920; 2. Creating a Science of Consumption at the Bureau of Home Economics, 1920-1940; 3. Reforming the Marketplace at the Bureau of Home Economics, 1923-1940; 4. Selling Home Economics: The Professional Ideals of Businesswomen, 1920-1940; 5. Product Testing, Development, and Promotion: Corporate Investment in Home Economics, 1920-1940; 6. From Service to Sales: Utility Home Service Departments, 1920-1940; 7. Mediation Marginalized: Home Economics in Government and Business, 1940-1970
8. Identity Crisis and Confusion: Home Economics and Social Change, 1950-1975Epilogue; Notes; Bibliography; Index; A; B; C; D; E; F; G; H; I; J; K; L; M; N; O; P; R; S; T; U; V; W; Y; Z
Summary Home economics emerged at the turn of the twentieth century as a movement to train women to be more efficient household managers. At the same moment, American families began to consume many more goods and services than they produced. To guide women in this transition, professional home economists had two major goals: to teach women to assume their new roles as modern consumers and to communicate homemakers' needs to manufacturers and political leaders. Carolyn M. Goldstein charts the development of the profession from its origins as an educational movement to its identity as a source of consumer expertise in the interwar period to its virtual disappearance by the 1970s. Working for both business and government, home economists walked a fine line between educating and representing consumers while they shaped cultural expectations about consumer goods as well as the goods themselves. Goldstein looks beyond 1970s feminist scholarship that dismissed home economics for its emphasis on domesticity to reveal the movement's complexities, including the extent of its public impact and debates about home economists' relationship to the commercial marketplace
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 363-390) and index
Notes English
Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on November 24, 2020)
Subject Home economics -- Vocational guidance -- United States -- History -- 20th century
Consumer education -- United States -- History -- 20th century
Feminism -- United States -- History -- 20th century
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- Corporate & Business History.
FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS -- General.
HOUSE & HOME -- Reference.
Consumer education
Feminism
Home economics -- Vocational guidance
United States
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2011044467
ISBN 9781469601700
1469601702
9780807872383
0807872385