In the middle of the twentieth century, a new class of marketing expert emerged beyond the familiar ad men of Madison Avenue. Working as commercial designers, consumer psychologists, sales managers, and market researchers, these professionals were self-defined "consumer engineers," and their rise heralded a new era of marketing. To what extent did these efforts to engineer consumers shape consumption practices? And to what extent was the phenomenon itself a product of broader social and cultural forces? This collection considers consumer engineering in the context of the longer history of transatlantic marketing. Contributors offer case studies on the roles of individual consumer engineers on both sides of the Atlantic, the impact of such marketing practices on European economies during World War II and after, and the conflicted relationship between consumer activists and the ideas of consumer engineering. By connecting consumer engineering to a web of social processes in the twentieth century, this volume contributes to a reassessment of consumer history more broadly.

Jan Logemann is a Research Fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington D.C., USA, and project coordinator of Transatlantic Perspectives: Europe in the Eyes of European Immigrants to the United States. His research focuses on transatlantic comparisons, the role of European immigrants in transatlantic exchanges, as well as on the development of mass consumer societies in the twentieth century. Donna Gabaccia is a professor of history at the University of Minnesota, USA. She is a leading migration historian and a noted specialist in women's immigration history. Her work has focused on Italian-American migration to the U.S., food and ethnicity, as well as on global and transnational migrations. Sally Gregory Kohlstedt is a professor of history of science and technology at the University of Minnesota, USA. Her research focuses on analyzing the ways in which science intersects with culture, recognizing that much social change in recent centuries has been influenced by science and technology and that the issues that arise in science are often connected to contemporary social and economic forces.

This volume explores connections between migration studies and research in the history of Europeanization and Europeaness, areas which have generated much interest in recent years. Beyond histories of European political integration and the intellectual and elite movements that have supported this process, scholars increasingly pay attention to the constructed nature of Europeaness and European identities, and to the multiplicity of ways in which this construction happens. Migrants can be a particularly useful lens on Europeanization processes as they provide a perspective from the periphery in two ways: by providing a view literally from the outside as in the case of those who left the continent or by providing a view from the margins of the European societies within which they live. The collection asks what 'Europe' meant to migrants abroad - particularly within the transatlantic context - and within the continent during the twentieth century. Contributions from a variety of disciplinary perspectives reflect both on the broader historical context and theoretical implications and highlight specific cases, such as those of European labor migrants to the United States, of transatlantic exiles and emigres, of Latin-American immigrants in present-day Europe, as well as the experience of highly-skilled migrants within the context of the European Union. Can we trace the emergence of European identities among different groups of migrants and, if so, what forms did they take? This book was originally published as a special issue of National Identities.

In the middle of the twentieth century, a new class of marketing expert emerged beyond the familiar ad men of Madison Avenue. Working as commercial designers, consumer psychologists, sales managers, and market researchers, these professionals were self-defined "consumer engineers," and their rise heralded a new era of marketing. To what extent did these efforts to engineer consumers shape consumption practices? And to what extent was the phenomenon itself a product of broader social and cultural forces? This collection considers consumer engineering in the context of the longer history of transatlantic marketing. Contributors offer case studies on the roles of individual consumer engineers on both sides of the Atlantic, the impact of such marketing practices on European economies during World War II and after, and the conflicted relationship between consumer activists and the ideas of consumer engineering. By connecting consumer engineering to a web of social processes in the twentieth century, this volume contributes to a reassessment of consumer history more broadly.