A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America
By L. Cohen. Journal of American Ethnic History, 2004
951 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Historians and social scientists analyzing the contemporary world unfortunately have too little contact and hence miss some of the ways that their interests overlap and the research of one field might benefit another. I am, therefore, extremely grateful that the Journal of Consumer Research has invited me to share with its readers an overview of my recent research on the political and social impact of the flourishing of mass consumption on twentieth-century America. What follows is a summary of my major arguments, enough to entice you, I hope, to read A Consumers' Republic (Cohen 2003), in which I elaborate on these themes. Although this essay is by necessity schematic, the book itself is filled with extensive historical evidence and is heavily illustrated with period images. In tracing the growing importance of mass consumption to the American economy, polity, culture, and social landscape from the 1920s to the present, I in many ways establish the historical context for your research into contemporary consumer behavior and markets. I hope you will …
Subfields: Marketing, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/41cee78b8e098be43e7fa853cd0d03972882886b
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Citations in the corpus
- Predatory Inclusion and Education Debt: Rethinking the Racial Wealth Gap (2017, background): “Until the 1950s, blacks were essentially excluded from mortgage lending (Cohen 2003; Freund 2007) and have since continued to experience barriers to access (Bradford 1979; Wyly and Holloway 1999).”
- Collaborative Market Driving: How Peer Firms Can Develop Markets Through Collective Action (2020, background): “Trade associations instruct them to focus on how the excise tax hindered their potential to create the manufacturing jobs that have become so electorally relevant in the United States.”
- Recommended for you: The Netflix Prize and the production of algorithmic culture (2016, background): “…wisdom of marketing, where categories such as age, race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality have long guided “captains of consciousness” in their efforts to pitch products to particular populations (Ewen, 2001; see also Cohen, 2003; Cross, 2000; Curtis, 2002; Zukin, 2004; cf. Duhigg, 2012).”
- Big other: surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization (2015, neutral): “On the outside were the dramas of access to affordable goods and services for more consumers (Cohen, 2003).”