|
Showing 1 - 3 of
3 matches in All Departments
With unprecedented subtlety, compassion and richness of detail,
Susan Porter Benson takes readers into the budgets and the lives of
working-class families in the United States between the two world
wars. Focusing on families from regions across America and of
differing races and ethnicities, she argues that working-class
families of the time were not on the verge of entering the middle
class and embracing mass culture. Rather, she contends that during
the interwar period such families lived in a context of scarcity
and limited resources, not plenty. Their consumption, Benson
argues, revolved around hard choices about basic needs and provided
therapeutic satisfactions only secondarily, if at all.Household
Accounts is rich with details Benson gathered from previously
untapped sources, particularly interviews with women wage earners
conducted by field agents of the Women's Bureau of the Department
of Labor. She provides a vivid picture of a working-class culture
of family consumption: how working-class families negotiated funds;
how they made qualitative decisions about what they wanted; how
they determined financial strategies and individual goals; and how,
in short, families made ends meet during this period. Topics
usually central to the histories of consumption-he development of
mass consumer culture, the hegemony of middle-class versions of
consumption, and the expanded offerings of the
marketplace-contributed to but did not control the lives of
working-class people. Ultimately, Household Accounts seriously
calls into question the usual narrative of a rising and inclusive
tide of twentieth-century consumption.
With unprecedented subtlety, compassion and richness of detail,
Susan Porter Benson takes readers into the budgets and the lives of
working-class families in the United States between the two world
wars. Focusing on families from regions across America and of
differing races and ethnicities, she argues that working-class
families of the time were not on the verge of entering the middle
class and embracing mass culture. Rather, she contends that during
the interwar period such families lived in a context of scarcity
and limited resources, not plenty. Their consumption, Benson
argues, revolved around hard choices about basic needs and provided
therapeutic satisfactions only secondarily, if at all. Household
Accounts is rich with details Benson gathered from previously
untapped sources, particularly interviews with women wage earners
conducted by field agents of the Women's Bureau of the Department
of Labor. She provides a vivid picture of a working-class culture
of family consumption: how working-class families negotiated funds;
how they made qualitative decisions about what they wanted; how
they determined financial strategies and individual goals; and how,
in short, families made ends meet during this period. Topics
usually central to the histories of consumption he development of
mass consumer culture, the hegemony of middle-class versions of
consumption, and the expanded offerings of the marketplace
contributed to but did not control the lives of working-class
people. Ultimately, Household Accounts seriously calls into
question the usual narrative of a rising and inclusive tide of
twentieth-century consumption."
At the time of its original publication, Working-Class America
represented the new labor history par excellence. A roster of
noteworthy scholars in the field contribute original essays written
during a pivotal time in the nation's history and within the
discipline. Moving beyond historical-sociological analyses, the
authors take readers inside the lives of the real men and women
behind the statistics. The result is a classic collection focused
on the human dimensions of the field, one valuable not only as a
resource for historiography but as a snapshot of workers and their
concerns in the 1980s.
|
You may like...
Tenet
John David Washington, Robert Pattinson
Blu-ray disc
(1)
R54
Discovery Miles 540
|