Building a Housewife's Paradise: Gender, Politics, and American Grocery Stores in the Twentieth Century
Supermarkets are a mundane feature in the landscape, but as Tracey Deutsch reveals, they represent a major transformation in the ways that Americans feed themselves. In her examination of the history of food distribution in the United States, Deutsch demonstrates the important roles that gender, business, class, and the state played in the evolution of American grocery stores.

Deutsch's analysis reframes shopping as labor and embeds consumption in the structures of capitalism. The supermarket, that icon of postwar American life, emerged not from straightforward consumer demand for low prices, Deutsch argues, but through government regulations, women customers' demands, and retailers' concerns with financial success and control of the "shop floor." From small neighborhood stores to huge corporate chains of supermarkets, Deutsch traces the charged story of the origins of contemporary food distribution, treating topics as varied as everyday food purchases, the sales tax, postwar celebrations and critiques of mass consumption, and 1960s and 1970s urban insurrections. Demonstrating connections between women's work and the history of capitalism, Deutsch locates the origins of supermarkets in the politics of twentieth-century consumption.
1100311722
Building a Housewife's Paradise: Gender, Politics, and American Grocery Stores in the Twentieth Century
Supermarkets are a mundane feature in the landscape, but as Tracey Deutsch reveals, they represent a major transformation in the ways that Americans feed themselves. In her examination of the history of food distribution in the United States, Deutsch demonstrates the important roles that gender, business, class, and the state played in the evolution of American grocery stores.

Deutsch's analysis reframes shopping as labor and embeds consumption in the structures of capitalism. The supermarket, that icon of postwar American life, emerged not from straightforward consumer demand for low prices, Deutsch argues, but through government regulations, women customers' demands, and retailers' concerns with financial success and control of the "shop floor." From small neighborhood stores to huge corporate chains of supermarkets, Deutsch traces the charged story of the origins of contemporary food distribution, treating topics as varied as everyday food purchases, the sales tax, postwar celebrations and critiques of mass consumption, and 1960s and 1970s urban insurrections. Demonstrating connections between women's work and the history of capitalism, Deutsch locates the origins of supermarkets in the politics of twentieth-century consumption.
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Building a Housewife's Paradise: Gender, Politics, and American Grocery Stores in the Twentieth Century

Building a Housewife's Paradise: Gender, Politics, and American Grocery Stores in the Twentieth Century

by Tracey Deutsch
Building a Housewife's Paradise: Gender, Politics, and American Grocery Stores in the Twentieth Century

Building a Housewife's Paradise: Gender, Politics, and American Grocery Stores in the Twentieth Century

by Tracey Deutsch

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Overview

Supermarkets are a mundane feature in the landscape, but as Tracey Deutsch reveals, they represent a major transformation in the ways that Americans feed themselves. In her examination of the history of food distribution in the United States, Deutsch demonstrates the important roles that gender, business, class, and the state played in the evolution of American grocery stores.

Deutsch's analysis reframes shopping as labor and embeds consumption in the structures of capitalism. The supermarket, that icon of postwar American life, emerged not from straightforward consumer demand for low prices, Deutsch argues, but through government regulations, women customers' demands, and retailers' concerns with financial success and control of the "shop floor." From small neighborhood stores to huge corporate chains of supermarkets, Deutsch traces the charged story of the origins of contemporary food distribution, treating topics as varied as everyday food purchases, the sales tax, postwar celebrations and critiques of mass consumption, and 1960s and 1970s urban insurrections. Demonstrating connections between women's work and the history of capitalism, Deutsch locates the origins of supermarkets in the politics of twentieth-century consumption.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780807898345
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date: 05/01/2010
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 352
File size: 4 MB

About the Author


Tracey Deutsch is assistant professor of history at the University of Minnesota.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Putting the state back into the study of consumption, Tracey Deutsch traces the rise of the supermarket as the essential form of food procurement. She highlights the embeddedness of gender within the development of modern retailing, expanding feminist understanding of unpaid labor, women’s work, and political activism. You'll never be able to think about shopping in the same way after reading this compelling book!” — Eileen Boris, Hull Professor and Chair, Department of Feminist Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

“This is a politically charged chronicle of an everyday institution. Deutsch is at the leading edge of one of the most dynamic and innovative fields of historical scholarship today. In her exceptionally sophisticated treatment, daily food shopping becomes an act of public engagement, struggle, even resistance. This is a big story dealing with the very heart of consumer culture.” — Warren Belasco, author of Meals to Come: A History of the Future of Food

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