Mediating Practices: Technology and the rise of European consumer

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MEDIATING PRACTICES: TECHNOLOGY AND THE RISE OF EUROPEAN

CONSUMER SOCIETY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Review article of the Consumer Society network with Tensions of Europe Project.1

Adri Albert de la Bruhze, Onno de Wit with Ruth Oldenziel

February 14, 2004.

As a research subject, consumption has been approached from a wide and varying number

of angles: historical, anthropological, sociological, and philosophical. When studying the

emergence of European consumer society and technological developments in the twentieth

century, historical studies are of particular interest. This is not to say, however, that non-

historical literature is of no importance. In fact, a great deal of the literature this essay

reviews originates in the sociology of consumption and of technology. The explanation for

this is that we view consumption as intimately connected to production. Taking its cue from

this literature, the essay actually argues that it is most profitable to focus on the interfaces

between production and consumption. Larger parts of this essay are therefore devoted to adiscussion of the ways in which the relationship between production and consumption was

conceptualised in this particular scholarship. It focuses on liberal societies, skewing

consumption in communist regimes, but inviting discussion for further discussion.

The review essay proceeds as follows. The introduction discusses and questions the

historical emergence of mass consumer society. The next paragraphs elaborate upon the

mediation of production and consumption in the twentieth century. The last part of the

review focuses on consumerism, and discusses literature on consumer organizations and

lobby groups that contested dominant forms of production and consumption. Finally, the

review draws some conclusions.

Introduction

1This review article was a collaborating effort involving many. A first review of the vast literature by Gwen

Bingle and Heike Weber, entitled, Reacting to the European consumption of technology, Munich 2001

provided the first basis of the discussion. Also, their paper Mass consumption and usage of 20th century


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During the twentieth century, an unprecedented number of new products left factories and

workshops for household use and daily life like vacuum cleaners, ironers and refrigerators,

canned foods and potato chips, radio and television sets, telephones, and cars. As disposable

income rose and products became cheaper, more people could afford these commodities for

the first time. Consumer goods became so dominant that the twentieth century has been

called the era of mass consumption.2

Traditionally, social and economic historians have viewed the increase in

consumption through the prism of production. In their view, increases in scale of production

and distribution necessitated similar increases in consumption. They assume that mass

consumption could only occur as the result of the development in mass production. Because

Anglo-Saxon scholarship has dominated the consumer culture literature, moreover, the

emergence of mass consumption in Europe is usually located in the 1950s and 1960s.3 As a

consequence of comparing such developments to the United States, where mass

consumption emerged as early as the 1920s and 1930s, European changes appear to be late

and lagging.4

This interpretation merits evaluation. First, mass consumption in Europe emerged in

a number of economic and social areas as early as the 1920s. Second, the desire for novel

products and for engaging in what historians have labelled a modern lifestyle, found

articulation through such cultural arenas as advertisement, magazines, and fiction in the

early decades of the century. Third, proto consumer groups like labour and womens

technologies: a literature review (08/16/2002) was tremendously helpful in writing this review essay. We

thank Liesbeth Bervoets, Matthew Hilton, Marie Chessel for their comments2 Besides the many national studies on consumer societies, recently a number of studies have been published on

international (in including European) consumer societies: H. Siegrist, H. Kaelbe and J. Kocka (eds.),

Europaeische Konsumgeschichte. Zur Gesellschaft- und Kulturgeschichte des Konsums (18. bis 20).Jahrhundert) (Frankfurt am Main 1997); Susan Strasser, Charles McGovern and Matthias Judt (eds.), Gettingand spending. European and American consumer societies in the twentieth century (Cambridge andWashington 1998); W. Koenig, Geschichte der Konsumgesellschaft (Stuttgart 2000); Martin Daunton and

Matthew Hilton (eds), The politics of consumption: Material culture and citizenship in Europe and America,(Oxford: Berg, 2001); W. Belasco and Philip Scranton,Food nations: Selling taste in consumer societies (NewYork 2002).3

A. Andersen, Der Traum vom guten Leben: Alltags- und Konsumgeschichte vom Wirtschaftswunder bisHeute (Frankfurt a/Main, 1997); E. Carter, How German is she? Postwar West German reconstruction andthe consuming woman (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997); C. Pfister,Das 1950er syndrom. DerWeg in die Konsumgesellschaft(Vienna 1995); H. Kaelble, Europische Besonderheiten des Massenkonsums1950-1990, in H. Siegrist, H. Kaelble and J. Kocka (eds.),Europische Konsumgeschichte. Zur Gesellschafts-und Kulturgeschichte des Konsums (18. bis 20. Jahrhundert) (Frankfurt am Main 1997), 169-196. See alsoVictoria de Grazia, Changing Consumption Regimes in Europe, 1930-1970: Comparative Perspectives on the

Distribution Problem in Susan Strasser, Charles McGovern, and Matthias Judt, eds., Getting and spending.European and American consumer societies in the twentieth century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1998) 59-84.


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organizations actively engaged in the politics and ideology of consumption, accumulating

knowledge and expertise, building networks, and launching lobbying and legislative

campaigns from the late nineteenth century onwards. Thus the widespread use and

acceptance of a large number of commodities were rehearsed almost a century before the

1960s.5

The precise periodization of twentieth-century consumption in Europe is sketchy,

however. Nor is the nature and emergence of a specific European consumer society self-

evident. We note this with a view towards an invitation for further research as indicated in

the conclusion.

The consumption literature is extensive and not without challenges.6 Each approach

carries its own tradition and research agenda. Since many of those research questions and

answers are not pertinent to technological developments and the ways they shaped Europe,

we focus here on a specific topic: the adjustment of production and consumption in the

context of the emerging consumer society in twentieth-century Europe. The following

literature review should generate insights into the underlying mechanisms of production and

consumption. In particular it focuses on the particular matching process, its characteristics

and context, exploring how the adjustment of production and consumption took shape

historically. Only by understanding these mechanisms, it is possible to enter into the

historical practices of production, consumption, and their mutual adjustments.7

4For a recent overview of American literature on consumption in 20th century USA see: Susan Strasser,

Making consumption conspicuous: Transgressive topics go mainstream Technology and Culture 43, 4(October 2002) 755-770.5

Martina Hessler, Mrs. Modern Woman: Zur Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte der Haushaltstechnisierung,(Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2001); Liesbeth Bervoets and Ruth Oldenziel, Vrouwenorganisaties als

producenten van consumptie en burgerschap, 1880-1980 Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis 28, 3 (2002)

273-300; J.W. Schot, Consumeren als het cement van de lange twintigste eeuw De Nieuwste Tijd 9 specialissue on technology, (December 1997) 27-37.6

See for extensive accounts of various approaches to consumption for instance D. Miller, R. Bockock and K.

Thompson (eds.), Material culture and mass consumption (Oxford 1987); B. Fine and E. Leopold, The worldof consumption (London and New York 1993); D. Miller, Acknowledging consumption. A review of new

studies (London and New York 1995); J. Storey, Cultural consumption and everyday life (London and Arnold1999); M.J. Lee (ed), The consumer society reader (Oxford 2000); L.B. Glickman (ed), Consumer society in

American history: A reader(Ithaca, 1999); J.B. Schor and D.B. Holt (eds), The consumer society reader(NewYork, 2000); V. de Grazia and E. Furlough (eds), The sex of things. Gender and consumption in historical

perspective (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).7

We do not pretend completeness here. For instance, approaches that focus on quantitative aspects of diffusion

patterns are omitted, but see for a fine review and theory on the international diffusion of the automobile: Gijs

Mom and Peter Staal, Autodiffusie in een klein vol land. Historiografie en verkenning van de

massamotorisering in Nederland in international perspectief, in Y. Segers et al. (eds.), Op weg naar eenconsumptiemaatschappij. Over het verbruik van voeding, kleding en luxegoederen in Belgie en Nederland(19e-20e eeuw) (Amsterdam 2002) 139-180.


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Production versus Consumption: A Literature Review

Eventhough the literature on consumption is vast, one question dominates: do producers

control consumers or do consumers dominate producers?8 This question is often posed in a

normative fashion. For a long time, the very idea of consumption evoked extreme negative

meanings, referring to the mindless and passive mass of consumers pressed to buy large

amounts of superfluous commodities.9 Because consumers all looked and acted the same,

cultural critics directed their attention away from consumers and towards the captains of

industry, the producers, designers, advertisers, artists.10

As a social theory, the manipulation and domination of the consumer by the forces

of production and capitalism was articulated forcefully during the 1950s and 1960s in the

Frankfurter Schules neo-Marxist analysis of consumer society. According to Adorno,

Horkheimer, and Marcuse producers dictated consumers needs, using advanced marketing

tools and advertising techniques.11 To these European theorists, who fled nazism and

emigrated to the US, America seemed the epitomize this danger. To evoke America was to

be horrified by a mass culture threatening to invade Europe.12

As early as 1899, however, the American sociologist Thorstein Veblen pointed out

that consumers were not completely will-less.13 He also noted that consumption was not just

an economic activity, but also a cultural act. The new class of the rich, especially its

womens consumer culture, articulated a rise in social class and cultural distinctions. As

8Compare D.B. Holt en J.B. Schor, Do Americans consume too much? in J.B. Schor and D.B. Holt (eds.),

The consumer society reader(New York 2000) x (introduction).9

For a concise overview of this perspective in British and American history of consumption literature see the

introductory chapter of Matthew Hilton, Consumerism in twentieth century Britain: The search for a historicalmovement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).10

Irene Cieraad,De elitaire verbeelding van volk en massa. Een studie over cultuur(Tilburg 1996) 99-112.11 Theodore W. Adorno and M. Horkheimer, The culture industry: enlightenment as mass deception [1944]in Juliet B. Schor and Douglas B. Holt (eds.), The consumer society reader (New York 2000) 3-20; M.Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of enlightenment (London 1979 [1947]); Herbert Marcuse,One dimensional man (London 1964); John Storey, Cultural consumption and everyday life (London 1999)18-23; Knut H. Soerensen, Adieu Adorno: The moral emancipation of consumers, in Anne Journ Berg and

M. Aune (eds.), Domestic technology and everyday life mutual shaping processes (Brussels 1994) 157-169.See for neo-Marxist approaches to the history of consumption for instance S. Ewen, Captains ofconsciousness. Advertising and the social roots of the consumer culture (New York 1976); S. Ewen and EEwen, Channels of desire. Mass images and the shaping of American consciousness (New York 1982).12

The literature is vast but see for a good introduction Richard Pells,Not Like US. How Europeans have loved,hated, and transformed American culture since World War II (New York: Basic Books, 1997).13

Thorstein Veblen, 'Conspicuous consumption' [1899] in Lee, The Consumer society reader, 31-47.

Originally in Thorstein Veblen, The theory of the Leisure Class. An economic Study of Institutions (London1925) 68-101; cf. Ruth Oldenziel, Making Technology Masculine. Men Women and Modern Machines in

America, 1870-1945 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1999) 42-46.


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such, Veblen demonstrated convincingly that commodities express deep social values

beyond their strict economic value.14

In the 1960s, the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard further elaborated the linkage

between consumption and individual identity.15 He postulated that consumers deliberately

act to differentiate themselves from others through consumption. Although Baudrillard

assigned consumers some power, he nevertheless viewed them as passive followers of

fashions and hypes, so propelled by multinational producers, advertising business, and

cultural avant-gardes. The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu also focussed on consumption as a

social and cultural act.16 According to Bourdieu, consumption is related to the social and

material position of consumers, including their 'cultural capital': the social and cultural rules

of behaviour that are imparted through training and education. Bourdieu observed that

consumption expresses taste and a specific lifestyle, that are both expressions of 'habitus': a

combination of classification schemes, judgements, and preferences. Bourdieu not only

showed that social differences are expressed in different consumption patterns but,

conversely, that social differences are also constructed through the consumption of

commodities.17

These studies ran parallel to a long research tradition established by anthropologists that

treated commodities as having a social history in which artifacts acquire (successive and

possibly contrasting) meanings, while creating social identities.18

14For the relation between mass produced goods and their meaning for modern (mainly western) consumer

societies see Daniel Miller (ed), Material culture: Why some things matter(Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1998). For the methodology to deal with artefacts as historical sources, see: Steve Lubar and David W.

Kingery (eds), History from things. Essays on material culture (Washington and London: SmithsonianInstitution, 1993). For the relation between goods and lifestyles since the 16

thcentury in the Netherlands see,

the so-called Wageningen School: Anton Schuurman, J. de Vries and Auke van der Woud(e?), Aards geluk.De Nederlanders en hun spullen 1550-1850 (Amsterdam: Balans 1997); Anton Schuurman, Materile cultuuren levenstijl. Een onderzoek naar de taal der dingen op het Nederlandse platteland in de 19e eeuw: de

Zaanstreek, Oost Groningen en Oost-Brabant ((Wageningen 1990); P. Brusse, Overleven door ondernemen.

De agrarische geschiedenis van de Over-Betuwe 1650-1850 (Wageningen 1999); and J.A. Kamermans,Materile cultuur in de Krimpenerwaard in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw: ontwikkeling en diversiteit(Wageningen 1999).15

See Jean Baudrillards oeuvre: The consumer society. Myths and structures (London 1998); The ideologicalgenesis of needs [1969], in Schor and Holt (eds.), The consumer society reader, 57-81; and Consumersociety, in Lawrence B. Glickman (ed.), Consumer society in American history: a reader(Ithaca 1999) 33-57;Jean Baudrillard, Beyond use value, in Martyn J. Lee (ed.), The consumer society reader(Oxford 2000) 19-30.16

Pierre Bourdieu,Distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste (London 1984).17

It is possible to illustrate Bourdieu's statements by looking at the different meaning of the bicycle in

European cities in the twentieth century. For Dutch workers, cycling primarily seems to have been associated

with user value, while for English, German and Austrian workers, the bicycle seemed to have played an

important role in (a class based) identity building: Adri A. Albert de la Bruhze and Frank C.A. Veraart,

Fietsverkeer in praktijk en beleid in de twintigste eeuw (Den Haag 1998).18See for instance Mary Douglas and B. Isherwoord, The world of goods: Towards an anthropology of

consumption (London: Routledge, 1979); A. Appadurai, Commodities and the politics of value and I.


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Other sociologists and anthropologists, less interested in the function of consumption

as such but questioned whether society needed all technology produced, contributed to the

vital role users and consumers played. Insisting on the importance of social groups in the

shaping of new technologies, Wiebe Bijker and Trevor Pinch developed the social

construction of technology (SCOT) perspective.19 They argued, following the insights from

political science, that technology is never autonomous but always involves peoples political

and social choices.20 Social groups like consumers (non-users, elderly, macho sports men,

children, parents, and bourgeois women), they believed, were important social actors in

attributing different meanings that determine their (non) use of new technologies. They

played crucial roles in the processes of (social and cognitive) closure and (material)

stabilisation of technology.21

Closely related to this school, was the actor network theory, which stressed the role

artefacts played in the formation of expertise knowledge and social relations.22 During

technological development, both humans and non-humans (plans, drawings, diagrams,

tables, scale models, calculations and artefacts) have to be translated, i.e. given meaning,

authority, and functions (enrolment) and aligned into socio-technical networks. French

anthropologist Madeleine Akrich analysed how artefacts represent users and use. Designers

build images of users into artefacts to prescribe preferred use, delegating agency to non-

humans. In Akrichs view, designers define actors with specific tastes, competencies,

Kopytoff, The cultural biography of things: commoditization in cultural perspective both resp. in A.

Appadurai (ed.), The social life of things. Commodities in cultural perspective (Cambridge 1986) 3-63; 64-91;C. Lury, Consumer culture (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996).19

Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes and Trevor Pinch (Eds.), The social construction of technologicalsystems (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1987); Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law (Eds.), Shapingtechnology/Building society: Studies in sciotechnical change (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1992); Wiebe E.Bijker, Of bicycles, bakelites and bulbs: Toward a theory of sociotechnicalchange (Cambridge MA: MITPress, 1995).20

Landon Winner, Do artefacts have politics?Deadulus 109, 1 (1980) 121-136 and his, The whale and thereactor. A search for limits in an age of high technology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986); A.Feenberg, QuestioningTechnology (London: Routledge, 1999); Steve Epstein,Impure science: AIDS, activismand the politics of knowledge ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).21

Closure and stabilisation can be labelled as a process of normalisation, meaning that a product or technology

is taken for granted by the individual consumer. Although in the process of normalisation wants are beingtransformed into needs, this does not mean that the purpose and meanings of artefacts can not change once

stabilised and normalised: Elizabeth Shove and Dale Southerton, Defrosting the freezer: From novelty to

convenience. A narrative of normalisation, Journal of Material Culture (2000) 301-319. In this article theauthors point at the crucial role of technological systems, commodity networks and user practices the

seamless web of consumption - in the normalisation of artefacts. With respect to the normalisation of

collective goods as gasoline, water and electricity see: J. Gronow and A. Warde, Ordinary consumption(London 2001). See also J.M. Utterback,Mastering the dynamics of innovation (Boston: Harvard BusinessSchool Press, 1994).22

Bruno Latour,Aramis or the love of technology (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1996); MichelCallon, Technological conception and adoption network: lessons for the CTA practitioner, in Arie .Rip, Tom


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motives, aspirations, political prejudices, and the rest, and they assume that morality,

technology, science and economy will evolve in particular ways. A large part

innovatorswork involves inscribing this vision of (or prediction about) the world in the

technical content of the new object. I will call the end product of this work a script or a

scenario.23 Akrich thus showed that technologies contain a script that attributes and

delegates competencies and responsibilities, implying that technologies and artefacts can

mediate, maintain or transform responsibilities and social relations. She pointed to the

differences of projected users, imagined users, and configured users. To sociologist Steve

Woolgar configuring defined the identity of putative users, and setting constraints upon

their likely future actions and resulted in a new technology that encourages only specific

forms of access and use.24 Hugh Mackay pointed out, however, that the reverse is true as

well. Designers are configured by consumers and the organisations for which they work,

especially when employed on contract basis.25 Because concepts as script and configuring

run the risk of reifying the innovators conception of users, social scientists of science Nelly

Oudshoorn and Trevor Pinch recently have introduced notions of agency, user diversity, and

user representation into the discussion.26

Opening up a space for investigating relevant social groups other than producers,

these scholars nevertheless confined themselves to the study of design, often neglecting

diffusion and daily use of new technologies.

In response to the SCOT school in particular, technology historian Ruth Schwarz

Cowan played a crucial and early role in focussing on userss agency. Introducing the

concept of the consumption junction,' she insisted that scholars should research networks

surrounding artefacts and systems not just from designers but also from the consumers

viewpoint.27 This junction, she argued in 1987, is the place and time at which the

J. Misa and Johan W. Schot (eds), Managing technology in society. The approach of constructive technologyassessment (London: Pinter, 1995) 307-330.23

Madeleine Akrich, The de-scription of technical objects, in Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law (eds), Shapingtechnology/Building society: Studies in sociotechnical change (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1992) 205-224, p.208 and her, User representations: Practices, methods and sociology in Arie Rip, Tom J. Misa and Johan W.

Schot (eds), Managing technology in society. The approach of constructive technology assessment (London:Pinter, 1995) 167-185.24

Steven Woolgar, Configuring the user: The case of usability trials, in Johan Law (ed), A sociology ofmonsters (London: Routledge, 1991) 89.25

H. Mackay, C. Crane, P. Beynon-Davies, D. Tudhope, Reconfiguring the user: using rapid application

development, Social Studies of Science 30, 5 (2000) 737-759.26

Nelly Oudshoorn and Trevor Pinch (eds.),How users matter: The co-construction of users and technology

(Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2003) 24.27Ruth Schwartz Cowan, More work for mother: The ironies of household technologies from the oven hearth

to the microwave ( New York: Basic Books, 1983); Carroll Pursell, Feminism and the rethinking of the


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consumer makes choices between competing technologies. Only by including this

perspective could scholars ascertain why some technologies succeeded and others failed.28

Cowans research illustrated a burgeoning feminist scholarship that focussed on women as

consumers and rejected the notion of their passivity.29 Opposing the omission of women

from most accounts and the emphasis on heroic mostly male designers, inventors, and

producers, feminist researchers sought to show how they have been involved in all stages

from design to the diffusion and social embedding of new products and technologies. This

scholarship turned the attention towards the active role of users and consumers in the

development and diffusion of products before their adoption and use in daily life.30 For

example, through the study on women and their spokespersons like housewife organizations

and household experts gender studies focus on users active role during all the phases of the

product development cycle both as projected and actual users who buy, use, and shape the

new products, but also change them.31 More importantly, it devoted considerable attention

to the complex dynamics of power negotiation.

A similar shift took place in media studies and information technologies scholarship.

In media studies, in particular, the active, expressive, and signifying consumer took center

stage most notably in the concept of domestication. Introduced by the British

communication scholar Roger Silverstone, domestication refers to the process by which new

products are bought, used, and bestowed with meaning before being embedded in domestic

spaces. The process of learning how to live with novel commodities and technologies and of

discovering new and unforeseen meanings and user functions, Silverstone called the 'taming

history of technology in Angela N.H. Creager, Elizabeth Lunbeck and Londa Schiebinger (eds.),Feminism intwentieth century science, technology andmedicine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001) 113-127.28

Ruth Schwartz Cowan, The consumption junction: a proposal for research strategies in the sociology of

technology in Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes and Trevor J. Pinch (eds), The social construction oftechnological systems: new directions in the sociology and history of technology (Cambridge MA: MIT Press,1987) 263.29

Challenging SCOT and other constructivist approaches, a discussion took place at the European theoreticalperspectives on new technology: feminism, constructivism and utility in 1993 at Brunel University. Cynthia

Cockburn, Ann Seatnan, Anne-Journn Berg, Steve Woolgar, Baukje Prins, Stefan Hirschauer et al.

participated. See also: Ruth Oldenziel, Man the maker, woman the consumer: the consumption junction

revisited, in Angela N.H. Creager, Elizabeth Lunbeck and Londa Schiebinger (eds.), Feminism in twentiethcentury science, technology and medicine (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2001) 128-148.30

Judy Wajcman, Feminism confronts technology (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991); Roger Horowitz andArwen Mohun, His and hers. Gender, consumption, and technology (Charlottesville: University of VirginiaPress, 1998); Nina E. Lerman, Arwen P. Mohun and Ruth Oldenziel, 'The shoulders we stand on and the view

from here: historiography and directions for research', in Lerman, Oldenziel, and Mohun eds. Gender &Technology. A Reader(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003 [1997]): 425-449. For a more generalintroduction to the issues see: Victoria de Grazia and Ellen Furlough (eds.), The sex of things: gender andconsumption in historical perspective (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996) and Jennifer Scanlon

(ed.), The gender and consumer culture reader(New York: New York University Press, 2000).31Wiebe Bijker and Karin Bijsterveld. "Women walking through plans. Technology, democracy and gender

identity" Technology and Culture (2002?)..


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of technology'.32 Decades ago British cultural studies scholar Stuart Hall had introduced the

idea of encoding/decoding of messages in the process of media consumption. He argued

that designers encode meanings that have to be decoded by consumers.33 Working in the

domestication tradition of Silverstone and feminist researchs emphasis on users active

agency, Norwegian researchers have extended the concept of domestication usually

located in the home - towards work, leisure, and (sub cultural) lifestyles. 34

Cultural studies focussed primarily on the question how cultural artefacts and

commodities become meaningful for their users.35 In its extreme form, this scholarship

perceives consumption as merely a process of acquiring meaning. Consumers are viewed as

'bricoleurs' who consciously and purposefully link heterogeneous elements into a

meaningful whole, thereby creating entirely new products and new cultural identities.36 A

notable exception is Paul du Gay and his colleaguess research on the development of the

Sony Walkman.37 In a semi-ethnographic approach, they analysed how new products

acquire cultural significance during the various stages of their societal career: design,

production, distribution, and consumption or use. In this process, a number of actors as for

instance designers, producers, marketers, shopkeepers, and consumers produce sometimes

32R. Silverstone and E. Hirsch (eds.), Consuming technologies. Media and information in domestic spaces

(London 1992); R. Silverstone, R.Hirsch and D. Morley, Information and communication technologies andthe moral economy of the household, in R. Silverstone and E. Hirsch (eds.) Consuming technologies, 15-32;R. Silverstone and R. Mansell (eds.), Communication by design. The politics of information andcommunication technologies (Oxford 1996); R. Silverstone and L. Haddon, Design and the domestication ofinformation and communication technologies: technical change and everyday life, in: Silverstone and

Mansell, Communication by design, 44-74; R. Silverstone, '"Talking about the screen machine": de toekomstvan nieuwe media in Europese huishoudens', in Valerie Frissen and Hedwig te Molder (eds.), Van forum tot

supermarkt? Consumenten en burgers in de informatiesamenleving(Leuven ,1998) 17-33.33

Stuart Hall, Encoding, decoding (1973) republished in S. During (ed.), The Cultural Studies Reader(London: Routledge, 1999): 507-517.34

A.J. Berg and M. Aune,Domestic technology and everyday life mutual shaping processes (Brussels 1994);Merete Lie and Knut Sorensen, Making technology our own? Domesticating technology into everyday life(Oslo 1996); A.S. Laegran, Escape vehicles? The internet and the automobile in a local-global intersection,

in Nelly Oudshoorn and Trevor Pinch (Eds.), How users matter: The co-construction of users and technology(Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2003) 81-100. For the contextual domestication of several everydaytechnologies in Western Germany since the 1960s, see: W. Ruppert (ed), Um 1968. Die Repraesentation der

Dinge (Marburg 1998).35

For an excellent review of consumption studies within cultural studies see J. Story, Cultural consumptionand Everyday life (London: Arnold, 1999). Other reviews can be found in: C. Lury, Consumer Culture,(Oxford: Polity Press, 1996); Don Slater, Consumer culture andmodernity (Oxford: Polity Press, 1997); S.Miles, Consumerism as a way of life (London: Sage, 1998); H. Mackay (ed.), Consumption and everyday life(London: Sage, 1997) For a more general overview of cultural studies see S. During (ed.), The CulturalStudies Reader(London: Routledge, 1999).36

Michel de Certeau, Making do: uses and tactics, in Lee, The consumer society reader, 162-174; M. deCerteau, The practice of everyday life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984); John Fiske, Dupesand Guerillas: The dialectics of cultural consumption, in Lee, The consumer society reader, 288-287.37

Paul du Gay et al.,Doing cultural studies. The story of the Sony Walkman (London 1997); this approach hadalso been pioneered for the microwave oven from a sociological and feminist point of view by Ormrod and

Cockburn. See below.


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contrasting, sometimes converging meanings. Invariably, they also create representations of

users and user practices. In this way, consumption becomes an active part of a process

during which production and consumption continuously are geared to each other.38 A

similar approach was followed in the already classic case study of the microwave oven by

sociologists Cynthia Cockburn and Suzan Ormrod who analysed the gender processes at

work during the design and production paying special attention to the retail trade, users, and

their spokesmen.39 They showed how the corporate household experts projected the user as

'the' homemaker, generating a specific knowledge and expertise about the microwave user

and his or her cooking practices. Therefore, retail traders developed their own image of

users and their requirements.

Nevertheless, production and producers are still the lead players in these stories. In

the case of the Walkman case, Sony is the prime actor, who initiated the Walkmans

development and market introduction. Interactions between consumption and production

take place only in response to Sonys initiatives. Media scholars Cawson, Haddon, and

Miles drew a similar conclusion for the design process of the interactive CD-based media,

text-based home electronic messaging and home automation products. Little thought was

given to actual consumer feedback in the early stages of product development even though

it turned out that visions of future use and expected (sub)cultural life styles as user contexts

and frames of meaning had been important.40

The Finnish sociologists Kontro and Pantzar for example show how Nokias cell phones

were being connected to a sportive and adventurous snowboarding way of life.41

The importance of domestication studies and cultural studies lies in their aspirations

towards consumer emancipation. They demonstrate that consumers in their meaning giving

practices have some power vis--vis producers. At the same time, these studies often view

38See also the pioneering work of Danielle Chabaud-Rychter, Women users in the design process of a food

robot: Innovation in a French domestic appliance company and and Ann Jorunn Berg, Technological

flexibility: Bringing gender into technology (or was it the other way round?) both in Cynthia Cockburn and R.

Fuerst-Dilic (eds.), Bringing Technology home: Gender and technology in a changing Europe (Birmingham:Open University Press, 1994).39

Cynthia Cockburn and Susan Ormrod, Gender and technology in the making(London: Sage, 1993).40

A. Cawson, L. Haddon and I. Miles, The shape of things to consume. Delivering information technology intothe home (Aldershot 1995).41

Michael Pantzar, Consumption as work, play and art: Representation of the consumer in future scenarios,

Design issues 16, 3 (2000) 3-18; T. Kotro and M. Pantzar, Product development and changing culturallandscapes Is our future in snowboarding? Design Issues 18 (2002). For commodities conceptualised as

indicators of lifestyle and identity, see M. Featherstone, Consumer culture and postmodernism (London1998), and P.K. Lunt and S.M. Livingstone, Mass consumption and personal identity: Everyday economicexperience (Buckingham, 1992).


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consumers only as end users. Consumer influence - if it exists at all- manifest itself through

the use of finished products only.42

Innovation studies have been particularly interested in the way products, user

practises, and markets develop together.43 They call attention to the importance of

incorporating user desires in product designs, involving potential users in product

development and anticipating the use of potential lead users like firms, governmental

institutions, and consumer organisations in the successful development and diffusion of new

products. Decades ago economic historian Rosenberg postulated that design, innovation,

and diffusion were never separated, but intimately connected, arguing that new products and

technologies are not necessarily superior to the older ones, but improved through a

processes of learning. He therefore introduced the notions learning by usingand learning by

doing, acknowledging the importance of interaction, producer - user interfaces, users and

user practices.44

Elaborating on these notions, Leonard Barton for instance contended that the

introduction of a new technology requires the accommodation of the technology to its new

settings, but, reversibly, also the adjustment of the setting to the new technology.45 Other

scholars emphasized that such processes of mutual adaptation of technology and society

also shape innovation and diffusion processes in which the market separates producers and

consumers of new technologies. Lundvall introduced the notion of learning by interacting.

Testing in particular he considered crucial for the early articulation and specification of user

demands and preferences.46 For similar reasons Von Hippel emphasized the importance of

42A classic example is Claude S. Fischer,America calling. A social history of the telephone to 1940 (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1992). See for the history of the telephone in the Netherlands Onno de Wit, 'De

vele gezichten van de telefoon', in J.W. Schot et al. (eds.), Techniek in Nederland in de Twintigste eeuw. Deel

V (Zutphen: Walbergpers, 2002) 179-201. Ron Kline and Trevor Pinch deal with the redesign of existingartefacts in 'Users as agents of technological change: the social construction of the automobile in the ruralUnited States', Technology and Culture, 37, 4 (October 1996) 763-795.43

For an overview of innovation literature covering this theme, see Johan W. Schot and Adri A. Albert de la

Bruhze, The mediated design of products, consumption and consumers in the twentieth century, in Nelly

Oudshoorn and Trevor Pinch (eds.), How users matters. The co-construction of users and technology(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003) 229-245. For a recent anthology on the role of users and markets intechnical innovation see R. Cooms et al. (eds.), Technology and the market. Demands, markets, users andinnovation (London 2001).44

Nathan Rosenberg, Perspectives on technology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976); NathanRosenberg,Inside the black box: technology and economics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).45

D. Barton, Implementation as mutual adoption of technology and organization in Research Policy 17(1988) 349-369.46

B.A. Lundvall, Innovation as an interactive process: from user-producer interaction to the national systemof innovation, in: G. Dosi, R. Nelson and G. Freeman (eds.), Technological change and economic theory(London 1988) 349-369.


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interacting early with lead users. That way user experiences could be collected and

problems would be avoided early on.47

The notion oflearning by doing-using-interactingfigures importantly in many other

innovation and diffusion studies.48 Such learning processes can be characterized as

mediation processes between production and consumption, in which users are mainly seen

as suppliers of useful information for producers and product development.49 Nevertheless,

innovation studies emphasize that in order to be successful producers and consumers need to

develop new products and user specifications jointly prior and after market introduction.

These user specifications and their possible linkages with technical design options cannot be

detected ex-ante, as Rosenberg emphasized, but find articulation during negotiation

processes between producers and consumers.50

The scholarship on consumption, consumption processes, and product development

is thus rich. A number of observations should be noted. First, the image of the consumer in

the consumption literature has changed. Not only did the consumers thus emancipate

through meaning giving practices, they also have been fore grounded as co-designer of

product designs and user practices at various locations in the development and diffusion of

products. Secondly, it is clear that during innovation trajectories producers involve projected

consumers in various ways. Production is implicated in consumption and visa versa. Thus,

the consumer no longer exists. Instead, different kinds of consumers exist at different

junctures. The domains of consumption and production are less separated than commonly

47E. von Hippel, Successful industrial products from customer ideas, Journal of Marketing(January 1978)

39-49; E. von Hippel, The sources of innovation (Oxford 1988); E. von Hippel and M. Tyre, How learning bydoing is done: problem identification in novel process equipment,Research Policy 24 (1995) 1-12.48

K.F. Habermeyer, Product use and product improvement, Research Policy 19 (1990) 271-283; S.Slaughter, Innovation and learning during implementation: a comparison of user and manufacturer

innovations, Research Policy 22 (1993) 81-95; J. Fleck, Learning by trying: The implementation ofconfigurational technology, Research Policy 23 (1994) 637-652; J.M. Utterback, Mastering the dynamics ofinnovation, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1994; R. Hoogma and Johan Schot, How innovative are

users? A critique of learning-by-doing and -using, Rod Cooms et al. (eds.), Technology and the Market.Demands, markets, users andinnovation (Cheltenham, 2001) 216-233.49

S. Wikstroem, The consumer as co-producer, European Journal of Marketing30, 4 (1996) 6-19. From aproducer perspective, and taking Volvo and Ikea as her cases, Wikstroem in fact shows that the consumer is

encouraged to provide the finishing touch upon a (co-producing) transaction, rather than being its crucial

determinant. The producer perspective of user as reactive actors, to learn from them and to shape them

trough the design of products becomes visible in Danielle Chabaud-Rychter, Women users in the design

process of a food robot: Innovation in a French domestic appliance company, in Cynthia Cockburn and R.

Fuerst-Dilic (eds.), Bringing Technology home: Gender and technology in a changing Europe (Birmingham:Open University Press, 1994). The same holds true for Ann Jorunn Berg, Technological flexibility: Bringing

gender into technology (or was it the other way round?) in the same anthology.50

For a nice example of demand and supply specifications see L. Koch and Dirk Stemerding, The sociology

of entrenchment: a custic fibrosis test for everyone? Social Science & Medicine 39 (1994) 1211-1220; R.

Kemp, J.W. Schot and R. Hoogma, Regime shifts through process of niche formation Technology Analysis


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believed; they are interactive parts of a process of societal embedding of new products.

From such a perspective, (mass)consumption and (mass)production are thus intimately

connected.

Given these insights from sociology, anthropology, and innovation studies, how are

we to understand this process historically? Where do we find historical studies that trace the

mediating practices, institutions, and politics between production and consumption over

time? And if we are to find a historical formation of this relationship, do we find a distinct

European pattern? If so, how formative has this been for the making of Europe? If, and how,

have historians used these insights from social scientists to map the twentieth century and to

delineate the meaning of Europe in it?

The Mediation of Production and Consumption in the Twentieth century

In the twentieth century, the mediation arrangements between production and consumption

changed. A gap developed between production and consumption because of urbanisation,

industrialisation, and mass production. Firms began to feel the need to establishing

industrial design, laboratories and design departments as they found consumers and their

desires increasingly elusive. Ironically this occurred at the very historical moment during

the 1960s when women and labour consumer organizations lost the prominent role they had

played for decades in this mediation process. To producers particular after World War II,

consumption became a no-man's-land that demanded discovery, definition, demarcation,

and control. Research in the history of technology on how and when this happened in

various European countries is just starting.

In various ways, corporate market research attempted to close the gap between

production and consumption. An extensive distribution system of shops, department stores,

and supermarkets developed as did door-to-door selling, small business service activities,

packaging, brand names, (brand) advertising, marketing, market research, and consumer

research.51 Producers considered marketing and advertising as their instruments of turning

mass production into mass consumption.52

and Strategic Management 10, 2 (1998) 175-195; M. Teubal, Innovation performance, learning andgovernment policy (London 1987) 76-96.51

G. Grossick and J. Jaumain (eds.), Cathedrals of consumption: the European department store, 1850-1939(Aldershot, 1999); Michael B. Miller, The Bon Marche. Bourgeois culture and the Deparmtent Store, 1869-

1920 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981); Rosalin Williams Dream Worlds. Mass Consumption inLate Nineteenth-Century France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982); S. Brandli,Der Supermarktim Kopf. Konsumkultur und Wohlstand in der Schweiz nach 1945 (Vienna 2000). For small business activities:


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It was not limited to producers. Consumers alsoand earlier--were active. Recently,

SCOT inspired scholars in the US have provided historical case studies showing how

stabilized technologies can change during diffusion and use as a result of creative,

dissatisfied, stubborn or resisting consumers.53 Historian Ron Kline examined how farmers

changed such stabilized technologies as the Ford Model T during the diffusion and use

phase through creativity or resistance.54 In another study, Kevin Borg revealed how a user

group like chauffeurs may subvert or alter the course of a technological development.55

R. Reith, Reparieren: Ein Thema der Technikgeschichte? in R. Reith and D. Schmidt (eds.), Kleine Betriebe angepasste Technologie? Hoffnungen, Erfahrungen und Ernuechetrungen aus sozial- undtechnikhistorischer Sicht(Muenster, 2002) 139-161; Ulrich Wengenroth, Small-scale business in Germany:The flexible element of economic growth in K. Odaka and M. Sawai (eds.), Small firms, large concerns. Thedevelopment of small business in comparativeperspective (Oxford, 1999) 117-139; U. Spiekermann,Basis der

Konsumgesellschaft. Entstehung und entwicklung des modernen Kleinhandels in Deutschland 1850-1914(Munich 1999). For marketing: Anneke H. van Otterloo, Eten en eetlust in Nederland 1840-1990. Eenhistorisch-sociologische studie (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker: 1990) and her Voeding in: J.W. Schot et al. (eds.),Techniek in Nederland in de twintigste eeuw. Deel III(Zutphen: Walburgpers, 2000) 237-375; On marketingand advertising in Europe: D. Rheinhardt, Von der Reklame zum Marketing. Geschichte derWirtschaftswerbung in Deutschland, Berlin, 1993; C. Lamberty, Reklame in Deutschland 1890-1914.Wahrnehmung, Professionalisierung und Kritik der Witschaftswerbung, Berlin, 2000; M. Kriegeskorte, 100

Jahre Werbubg in der Handel: eine Reise durch die Deutsche Vergangenheid (Koeln, 1995); Jaap vanGinneken, De uitvinding van het publiek. De opkomst van opinie en marktonderzoek in Nederland(Amsterdam: Otto Cramwinckel, 1993); W. Schreurs, De geschiedenis van de reclame in Nederland. Deontwikkeling van reclame in Nederland van 1879 tot 1990 (Utrecht: 1990). For the U.S. on these subjects see:Roland Marchand, Advertising the American dream: Making way for modernity, 1920-1940 (Berkeley:University of California, 1985); Pamela Walker Laird,Advertising Progress. American Business and the rise

of consumer marketing (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998); Susan Porter Benson, Countercultures: Saleswomen, managers and customers in American departmentstores (Urbana: University of IllinoisPress, 1986). A.J. Allison, Tupperware. The promise of plastics in 1950s America (Washington: SmithsonianInstitution Press, 1999);52

See for the particularly rich French and Belgium scholarship: Marjorie A. Beale, The Modernist Enterprise.French Elites and the Threat of Modernity (1900-1940), (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999); Marie-Emmanuelle Chessel, La publicit. Naissance dune profession (1900-1940) (Paris: CNRS-Editions, 1998);Victoria de Grazia, The Arts of Purchase: How American Publicity Subverted the American Poster, 1920-

1940, in B. Kruger and P. Mariani ed, Remaking History (Seattle: Bay Press, 1989) 221-257; Stephen L.Harp, Marketing Michelin. Advertising and Cultural Identity in Twentieth-Century France (Baltimore: TheJohns Hopkins University Press, 2001); Marc Martin, Trois sicles de publicit (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1992);Vronique Pouillard, La publicit en Belgique (1850-1975). Institutionns, acteurs, entreprises, influences(Thse de doctorat en Philosophie et Lettres, Universit libre de Bruxelles, Bruxelles, 2003) 3 vols. On

marketing Patrick Fridenson, French Automobile Marketing: The Automobile and Retailing Industry, inAkio Shimokawa Okochi, eds., Development of Mass Marketing: The Automobile and Retailing Industry(Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1981); Marc Meuleau, Les HEC et lvolution du management en France(1881-annes 1880), thse de doctorat detat dHistoire, universit Paris X-Nanterre, 1992 (to be published,Editions de lEHESS), 4 vols.53

Ron Kline and Trevor Pinch, Users as agents of technological change: The social construction of the

automobile in the rural United States, Technology andCulture 37, 4 (October 1996) 763-795; Ronald Kline,Consumers in the country: Technology and social change in rural America (Baltimore: Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, 2000). Although not directly influenced, see also Gail Cooper, Air-conditioning America.

Engineers and the controlled environment, 1900-1960 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).54

Ronald E. Kline and Trevor Pinch, Users as agents of technological change: The social construction of the

automobile in the rural United States, Technology and Culture 37, 4 (1996) 763-795; Ronald E. Kline,Consumers in the country: Technology and social change in rural America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins

University Press, 2000).55Kevin Borg, The Chauffeur problem in the early auto era: structuration theory and the users of technology,

Technology and Culture 40 (1999) 797-832, pp. 809, 832.


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Epsteins case study on how American AIDS activists changed pharmaceutaicalsclinical

trials and developed contra expertise provides yet another rich example of how users seize

power. It showed the political character of consumer and user intervention in different

stages of technological development.56

A century ago, women and labour groups established organizations which positioned

themselves as representatives of consumers, defending and lobbying for more consumer

rights from the late nineteenth century onwards: the American National Consumers League

(1898), the French Ligue Social dAcheteurs (1903), the Dutch Nederlandse Vereniging van

Huisvrouwen (1912), German Reichsverband Deutscher Hausfrauenvereine (1915), the

East-German Zentrale Aktiv fuer Haushaltstechnik, the Consumers Council, the

Consumers Association and the National Consumer Council in Britain, the Canadian

Association of Consumers.57 These organizations were not limited to volunteer associations,

seeking to organize women into critical consumers. They also brought together women

professionals who organized around new technologies such as electricity, gas, and

industrially processed food. For this purpose, several women electrical associations were

established during the 1930s in Europe (Great Britain, Germany, Scandinavia, the

Netherlands, and the United States).58 Similarly, home economists precariously positioned

themselves between producers and consumers.59 These organizations and professionals

interacted with representatives of corporate marketing, advertising, and design at various

locations to negotiate (either formally or informally) the design of new products, their use,

and their users. Consumption became thus mediated consumption through a host of actors

56Steve Epstein, The construction of lay expertise: AIDS, activism and the forging of credibility in the reform

of clinical trials, Science, Technology and Human Values 20, 4 (1995) 408-437 and his, Impure science:AIDS, activism and the politics of knowledge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).57

On American consumers leagues see: Landon Storrs, Civiilizing Capitalism. The National

ConsumersLeague, Womens Activism, and Labor Standards in the New Deal Era (Chapel Hill: TheUniversity of North Carolina Press, 2000); Kathryn Kish Sklar, Florence Kellye and the nations work(NewHaven: Yale University Press, 1995) and her The Consumers White Label Campaign of the Natioanl

Consumers League, 1898-1918 in Susan Strasser, Charles McGovern, and Matthias Judt, eds., Getting andSpending. European and American consumer societies in the twentieth century (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1998).58

Carroll W. Pursell, Domesticating Modernity: The Electrical Assocation for Women, 1924-1940,Technology andCulture 34 (1993) 78-97 and his Am I a lady or an engineer?: The origins of theWomens Engineering Society in Britain, 1918-1940British Journal of the History of S cience (1990) 47-67;Ruth Oldenziel et al.,Huishouden in Johan Schot et al. eds., Techniek in Nederland in de twintigste eeuw Vol.IV (Zutphen: Walburg Pers 2001); See also Pamela E. Mack, What difference has feminism made to

engineering in the twentieth century? in Angela N.H. Creager, Elizabeth Lunbeck, and Londa Schiebinger,

eds.,Feminism in twentieth-century science, technology, and medicine (Chicago: Universtiy of Chicago Press,

2001) 149-164.59The literature is dominated by American examples (e.g. Sarah Stage and Virginia B. Vincinti, eds.

Rethinking Home Economics (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1997).


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like firms, governments, and social organisations. A sizeable middle field between

production and consumption developed.60

Firms established departments for marketing and advertising agencies that carried

out consumer surveys.61 In addition, corporate testing laboratories were established where

users tested and evaluated new products. Sometimes large-scale user experiments were

carried out. The distribution sector as well (wholesale trade, department stores, shops and

supermarkets) investigated whether new products would be successful by consulting

(travelling) salesmen.62 Because many products have to comply with legal requirements,

insurance companies and governmental agencies were also involved in the introduction and

testing of new products; they established laboratories and testing stations. So did consumers

organised in co-operatives or volunteer organizations. Finally, the introduction of new

products required the development and coordination of products and services that

completed each other. To be functional cars, for instance, required the development of

paved roads, motorcar garages, petrol stations, schools of motoring, and traffic regulation.63

60Ruth Oldenziel (ed), Huishouden in Johan W. Schot et al (eds.), Techniek in Nederland in de twintigste

eeuw Deel IV(Zutphen: Walburgpers, 2001) 10-151, and Johan W. Schot, Harry W. Lintsen and Arie Rip,Techniek in ontwikkeling, in J.W. Schot et al. (eds), Techniek in Nederland in de twintigste eeuw, Deel I(Zutphen: Walburgpers 1998) 17-51.61

W. Dolfsma, Valuing pop music. Institutions, values and economics (Delft: Eburon, 1998); Onno de Wit,

Adri A. Albert de la Bruhze and Marja Berendsen, Ausgehandelter Konsum: Die Verbreitung der modernenKueche, des Kofferradios und des Snack Food in den Niederlanden, Technikgeschichte 68 (2001) 2, 133-155;Onno de Wit, Producenten, consumenten en intermediairen. De introductie en diffusie van de transistorradioin Nederland in de jaren vijftig en zestig in Y. Segers et al. (eds). Op weg naar een consumptiemaatschappij.Over het gebruik van voeding, kleding en luxegoederen in Belgi en Nederland (19e en 20e eeuw) (Amsterdam2000) 181-201; Adri A. de la Bruhze and Onno de Wit (eds), De productie van consumptie, special issue

Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis 28, 3 (2002) 257-390; Johan W. Schot and Adri A. de la Bruhze, Themediated design of products, consumption and consumers in the twentieth century, in Nelly Oudshoorn and

Trevor Pinch (eds.)How users matter(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003) 229-245. Studies that focus on themiddle field: Fine and Leopold, The world of Consumption; Carolyn M. Goldstein, From service to sales:home economics in light and power, 1920-1940, Technology and Culture 38, 1 (1997) 121-152; Sarah. Stageand V. Vincenti (eds.), Rethinking home economics: Women and the history of a profession (Ithaca: CornellUniversity Press, 1999); Ronald B. Kline, Consumers in the Country. Technology and social change in rural

America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000); Roger Horowitz and Arwen Mohun (eds.), Hisand hers. Gender, Consumption and Technology (Charlottesville 1998); Martina Hessler, Mrs. ModernWoman: Zur Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte der Haushaltstechnisierung(Frankfurt am Main, Campus, 2001);M. Harvey, A. McMeekin, Sally Randles et al., Between demand and consumption: a framework for

research, Center for Research on Innovation and Competition Discussion Paper No. 40, University of

Manchster, Jan. 2001; Karin Zachmann, A socialist consumption junction. Debating the mechanization of

housework in East Germany, 1956-1957, Technology and Culture 43, 1 (January 2002) 73-99.62

For a beautiful analysis of the mediating role of (home economics in) the retail trade between consumption

and production in the United States, see: Regina L. Blaszczyk,Imagining Consumers. Design and innovationsfrom Wedgwood to Corning(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000).For the development of theretail trade in the UK from mediator to leading actor dictating to a large extent production and product

development, see: M. Glucksman, Retailing: production and consumptions missing relation, EconomicSociology, European Electronic Newsletter1 (2000) 3, 12-16.63

Johan W. Schot (ed.), Transport in Johan W. Schot et al (eds.), Techniek in Nederland in de twintigsteeeuw. Deel V(Zutphen: Walburgpers 2002); David A. Kirsch and Gijs P.A. Mom, From service to productbased mobility concepts: technical choice and the history of the Electric Vehicle Company, Business History


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Different historical case studies have thus used the insights of the sociology of

consumption and technology, but not in a systematic fashion. An attempt has been made in a

special issue devoted to the mediation of consumption in twentieth century Netherlands.64

The contributions show that mediation practices are very heterogeneous depending on

location, social actors, and historical context. Producers try to image their

productsconsumers and consumption, building these images into technical designs; at the

same time a broad gamut of organisations and institutions sought to imprint the represented

user and represented use into the design, the development, and the diffusion of new

products. These mediation practices also have immaterial outcomes: they generate

knowledge, expertise, and consumer images that shape cultural ideologies emphasizing

family values. Spokesmanship is part and parcel of mediation practices because whenever

consumers are being represented, projected or imagined, spoke persons enter the scene.

Throughout the twentieth century this role was contested. Within women organisations

academically trained women proud of their technical expertise clashed with non-

academically trained women stressing the necessity of practical experience as their special

area of expertise. Although considered essential in a consumer society, neither

spokemanship nor the kind of expertise were self-evident or uncontested.65 As a result

different constellations and coalitions of consumer organisations and other actors were

established in the course of the product development, including houses, kitchens and their

social and technical networks.66 Furthermore, consumer organisations like automotive and

cycling clubs were involved in disciplining car drivers through traffic education, and

promoting a specific use of the family car that was to double as a business and a leisure car.

The automotive club also acted as an important system builder in which the car and

infrastructure became intertwined. It actively engaged in construction, signposting, petrol

distribution, service stations, repair shops, and traffic coordination.67

The historical case studies of radio, TV, and snacks show that no ready-made recipe

for the sale of new products ever existed. Marketing involved thinking and re-thinking the

relations between producer and consumer, between user preferences and actual use. It is

Review 76 (spring 2002) 75-110; Gijs P.A. Mom, Geschiedenis van de auto van morgen. Cultuur en techniekvan de elektrische auto (Deventer 1997).64

De productie van consumptie, special issue Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis 28, 3 (2002) 257-390.65

Liesbeth Bervoets and Ruth Oldenziel, Vrouwenorganisaties als producenten van consumptie en

burgerschap 1880-1980, Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis 28, 3 (2002) 273-300.66

Marja Berendsen en Anneke van Otterloo, Het gezinslaboratorium. De betwiste keuken en de wording van

de moderne huisvrouw, Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis 28, 3 (2002) 301-322.


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thus a heterogeneous mediation process of testing commodities, consumer projections, and

consumer representations, varying also by firm and type of product.68

These contributions confirm that consumerseither real or projectedwere not

passive bystanders, but actively involved in the making of twentieth century consumer

during market research, product tests, and product development. Twentieth century mass

consumption was made possible through on ongoing matching of production and

consumption, articulated through an institutionalised middle field of intermediaries, spoke

persons, representatives and care takers.

This begs the question who is represented by whom? Do mediators say what the

represented users want them to do or are mediators leading, guiding and directing

represented users.69 The answer to this question is both. Mediation is a process in which

authority, expertise and representation are vulnerable to contestation. Who leads, speaks,

and negotiates is the outcome of powers relations.70 This is particularly clear in the politics

of consumer organisations in European countries in the twentieth century and the role of the

government.71

67Gijs Mom, Peter Staal and Johan Schot, De beschaving van het gemotoriseerde avontuur. ANWB en

KNAC als wegbereiders bij de inburgering van de auto in Nederland, Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis28, 3 (2002) 323-346.68

Onno de Wit en Adri Albert de la Bruhze, Bedrijfsmatige bemiddeling. Philips en Unilever en de

marketing van radios, televisies en snacks in Nederland in de twintigste eeuw, Tijdschrift voor Sociale

Geschiedenis 28,3 (2002) 347-372.69 Roger Horowitz and Arwen Mohun (eds.), His and hers: Gender, consumption and technology(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998); S. Wikstroem, The consumer as co-producer,European

Journal of marketing30, 4 (1996) 6-19; Danielle Chabaud-Rychter, Women users in the design process of afood robot: Innovation in a French domestic appliance company and Anne-Jorunn Berg, Technological

flexibility: Bringing gender into technology (or was it the other way round?) both in Cynthia Cockburn and R.

Fuerst-Dilic (eds.), Bringing Technology home: Gender and technology in a changing Europe (Birmingham:Open University Press, 1994).70

Ruth Oldenziel, Man the maker, woman the consumer: The consumption junction revisited, in: A.N.H.

Creager, E. Lunbeck and L. Schiebinger (eds.), Feminism in the twentieth-century science, technology andmedicine ( Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2001).71

Joy Parr, Domestic goods: The material, the moral and the economic in the postwar years (Toronto:University of Toronto Press, 1999); Martina Hessler, Mrs. Modern Woman: Zur sozial- und Kulturgeschichte

der Haushaltstechnisierung(Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2001); Karin Zachmann, A socialist consumptionjunction. Debating the mechanization of housework in East Germany, 1956-1957, Technology and Culture43, 1 (January 2002) 73-99.


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The Politics of Consumption in the Twentieth century

British historian Matthew Hilton and American labor historian Lizabeth Cohen have called

the activities of consumer organisations and lobby groups, and government policies the

politics of consumption. Elaborating on the scholarship of labor historians and gender

studies, Hilton argued that consumption has been one of the most recurring themes by

which citizens have moulded their political consciousness and shaped their political

organisations, as well as being one of the main acts around which governments have focuses

their politics and interventions.72 Consumers for example boycotted goods and stores as a

political act to demand civil rights. The decision how, when and where to consume has been

a key tactic in the co-operative movement in the twentieth century. Despite the original

utopian spirit of co-operators, the improvement of living conditions contributed to the

reliability and output of labour power. That is why liberals, who sought to incorporate the

workforce in society guided by free enterprise and private property, welcomed collective

enterprises as a favourite strategy of self-help 73 As such it is argued that the consumer co-

operations ran counter to the commercialisation of daily life and smoothed the spread of free

enterprise at the same time. This is not only an ironic coincidence but also part of the

ideological flexibility of the co-operative movement.74

Closely affiliated with labour organizations, the co-operative movement inspired

socialist and anarchist thinking and policies on the price and quality of housing, food, and

household necessities. The movement succeeded in mobilising many working-class people

but also in educating them politically in the meaning and nuts-and-bold of citizenship

beyond the influence of the (formal institutions of the) state.75

72Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers Republic. The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New

York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003); Mathew Hilton, Consumerism in twentieth-century Britain: The search for a

historical movement, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) 1. See also his Models of consumer-political action in the twentieth century: rights, duties and justice, Histoire et Socit (2004 forthcoming) ;Class, consumption and the public sphere, Journal of Contemporary History 35, 4 (2000) 655-666; and withMartin Daunton Hilton (eds), The politics of consumption: Material culture and citizenship in Europe and

America (Oxford: Berg, 2001).73

P. Gurney, The middle-class embrace: language, representation, and the contest over Co-operative Forms in

Britain, c. 1860-1914 (1994); M. Purvis, societies of consumers and consumer societies: co-operation,consumption and politices in Britain and continental Europe c. 1850-1920, Journal of Historical Geography,24, 2(1998) 147-1690; E. Furlough and C. Strikwerda, eds. Consumers against capitalism. Consumercooperation in Europe, North America and Japan, 1840-1990 (1999).74

Furlough and Strikwerda, p.3.75

For the role and influence of the co-operative movement in England see: P. Gurney, Co-operative cultureand the politics of consumption in England, 1870-1930 (Manchester, 1996). For Europe, North America and

Japan see P. Maclachlan and F. Trentmann, Civilising markets: traditions of consumer politics in twentieth-century Britain, Japan and the United States, in M. Bevir & F. Trentmann (eds), Markets in HistoricalContexts: Ideas and politics in the modern world (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Ellen


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In England, the issue of consumption and consumerism played an important third and

middling role in the bipolar political landscape. Many ordinary citizen-consumers saw

consumerism as an alternative to trade unions and to organised business. In addition to

price, quality, and safety demands, consumer organisations kept raising issues of access,

fairness, and independence. Hilton finds it remarkable that consumption, consumerism, and

consumer organisations are hardly considered as a political act, but only as an excess of

consumer power and materialism or even as a movement preventing ordinary people from

realizing their full emancipation or from working towards a better world. Hilton argues for

re-politicising consumerism and for an institutional turn away from the humanist

explorations of the social life of things to show the historical development of a still viable

and forceful political power.

Hilton points at how in various European countries consumer leagues appeared

simultaneously, showing that organised consumers were a main feature and political force in

twentieth century Europe. Developing contacts with each other in the first part of the

century, national organisations started collaborating formally during the 1960s, when they

established for example international organisations like the International Organisation of

Consumers Unions (IOCU), now Consumers International. Since then consumer-citizen

issues have been debated and fought over at a pan-European level.76

The members of international consumer organisations tried to represent and defend national

consumer interests, while also shaping an emerging European ideal and consensus. These

tensions, activities and their outcomes deserve appropriate attention in a research program

on the emerging European consumer society.

This approach offers fertile ground for future research to map the political formation in the

emergence of consumer society and the direction of technological developments in Europe.

Insights from sociology, anthropology, and economics looking at technological

developments may provide the appropriate theoretical moorings.

Furlough and C. Strikwerda, Consumers against Capitalism? Consumer co-operation in Europe, NorthAmerica and Japan, 1840-1990 (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999); Ellen Furlough, Consumer co-

operation in France: The politics of Consumption, 1834-1930 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991).76Matthew Hilton, Models of consumer-political action in the twentieth century: rights, duties and justice,

Histoire et Socit (2004 forthcoming).


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Some conclusions

As already mentioned at the start of this review essay, large parts of it were devoted to the

discussion of sociological literature. One of the conclusions that can be drawn on the basis

of this discussion is that the insights from social scientists have not, at least until now, been

very influential in historical research so far. Although there exists a growing body of

literature on European consumption history briefly discussed in the introduction and the

last paragraph of this review essay in general, sociological research does not inform or

inspire this literature. This means that the mutual shaping of the processes of consumption

and production still does not get sufficient exposure. Production and consumption are

treated as isolated entities. As a result, the emergence of a European mass consumer society

is more or less taken for granted, or visualized as an effortless adoption of American

practices.77 Focusing on the interfaces between production and consumption offers the

opportunity to incorporate producers and marketers within consumption history, without

falling into the trap of thinking in terms of dominant corporate control. At the same time, it

enables us to take consumers serious as co-producers. In combination, linking production

and consumption processes enables us to show how mediation networks structured the

development, introduction, diffusion and use of new technologies and new commodities in

Europe.

It is easy to note that any periodization of European consumer society is still in its

infancy. In fact, future research should deal with periodization at at least three different

levels. First, the emergence and further development of consumer societies in different

European countries (and how these developments related to each other). Second, the

emergence and further development of different consumer regimes or cultures in different

parts of Europe and the United States (and how these different regimes interacted).78 Third,

the history of European consumerism: how this movement started around 1900, became

professionalized and politically charged in the 1960s, and got incorporated by

multinationals at the end of the twentieth century. To sum up, future research must seek to

develop dynamic analyses of European consumer societies, European consumer regimes,

and European consumerism as historically contingent.

77See for a sophisticated discussion the seminal collection by Gary Herrigel and Jonathan Zeitlin, eds.,

Americanization and its limits. Reworking US technology and management in post-war Europe and Japan(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).


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Finally, we should bear in mind that almost all of the literature in this review essay

contemplates private consumption, that is: consumption on an individual base and as an

individual act. This focus on private consumption, with its bias towards abundance, free

market philosophy, and multinational flexibility, is almost self-evident. However, in reality

it is a historical construction, firmly rooted in so-called western consumer societies. Any

history of European consumer society should critically reflect upon this bias, and include in

its analysis collective consumption modes and consumption of shortage regimes.79

78Victoria de Grazia, Changing consumption regimes in Europe, 1930-1970. Comparative perspectives on

the distribution problem and Nancy Reagon Comparing apples and oranges. Houwewives and the politics of

consumption in interwar Germany both in Susan Strasser et al., eds., Getting and Spending.79

These shortage regimes were not limited to Eastern and Central Europe during the Cold war of course. In

times of war, hot and cold, shortage than abundance was the guiding principle. Important starting point,however, are new cold war studies. For example, see: Karin Zachmann, A socialist consumption junction.

Debating the mechanization of housework in East Germany, 1956-1957, Technology and Culture 43, 1(January 2002) 73-99; Susan E. Reid and David Crowley, eds., Style and Socialism. Modernity and MaterialCulture in Post-War Eastern Europe (Oxford: Berg, 2000); Ina Merkel, Working People and COnsumptionUnder Really-Existing socialism: Perspectives from the German Democratic Republic, InternationalLaborand Working Class History 55 (Spring 1999) 92-111 and her Consumer Culture in the GDR, or how the

struggle for antimodernity was lost on the battleground of consumer culturein Susan Strasser et al., Gettingand Spending, 281-299; Sandrine Kott,Le communisme au quotidien. Les entreprises dtat dan la societe est-allemande (Paris: Belin, 2001) 271-293.

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Mediating Practices: Technology and the rise of European consumer

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