Buying Power: A History of Consumer Activism in America (review)

Not every consumer boycott has such a revered place in history as the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56. (Think, for instance, of the annual futility of Buy Nothing Day or the silliness of the "Freedom fries" boycott of French goods in response to France's refusal to join the invasion of Iraq.) The purpose of historian Lawrence Glickman's book, Buying Power, is to remind the public, including contemporary activists, of the long history of consumer boycotts in the U.S.

Glickman traces the history of boycotts across four centuries. Glickman begins his account with the Revolutionary War campaign to shun British imports, an effort that was itself "a descendent of the venerable practice of ostracism" (144). The antebellum and Civil War periods were rife with boycotts devoted to ending slavery (or supporting it, in the case of the "nonintercourse" movement), which in turn gave way to a variety of boycotts on behalf of the worker rights. Fully half of Glickman's book is devoted to boycotts before the Progressive Era, the time period during which the boycott discussions by Monroe Friedman (1999) and Lizabeth Cohen (2003) start.

Even if boycotters themselves were often unaware of their place in a broader tradition, Glickman shows the threads of continuity that bind the boycotts across time. The first Montgomery bus boycott occurred in 1900, not the 1950s, when African Americans in more than twenty-five Southern cities protested segregated streetcars. Another example of cotinuity involves the influence of Sarah Pugh on her grand niece, Florence Kelley. Prior to the U.S. Civil War, Pugh was a prominent "free produce" activist, believing that abolition could be brought about by boycotting goods made with slave labor. The story of Pugh's exploits was passed down by her family to Kelley who, seventy years later, helped found the National Consumers League. The League's most potent weapon was the use of a white label to designate products made under fair working conditions.

Glickman has a knack for unearthing lesser-known details of well-known boycotts as well as bringing to light boycotts that have been overlooked by others. For example, the free produce movement's goal of ending slavery by boycotting Southern goods is well documented, but not the feelings of disappointment by its supporters when viewing the "coarse calicos" and "indifferent colors" displayed in free produce stores (80). Less acclaimed boycotts, such as those by 19th century Sabbatarians of businesses that opened on the Sabbath and by women in the 1930s of Japanese silk, also receive their due from Glickman. Glickman draws adroitly from diverse sources—newspapers, pamphlets, political cartoons, memoirs—to provide rich detail on each boycott.

This is a book of ideas, though, not personalities and stories. Glickman's elegant writing style helps balance a complex and multilayered argument. The rich account that Glickman provides of consumer boycotts (and "buycott" campaigns to reward virtuous sellers) is one of "continuities and novelties" (85), of political actors who think they have invented new tactics while they borrow and adopt from their predecessors, of events that both shaped and reflected their era, and in which consumer society can function "simultaneously [as] a resource for and an impediment to political engagement" (89).

Glickman draws a crucial distinction between "consumer activism" and the "consumer movement." As used by Glickman, the term "consumer activism" has little to do with the high profile efforts by people like Ralph Nader or Esther Peterson to make products safer or advertising more truthful via pressure on the U.S. government. It refers more narrowly to the use of purchasing power by everyday consumers in pursuit of ethical goals. The essence of consumer activism, in Glickman's view, is recognizing that buying entails "bonds of causality and responsibility that link individuals to each other in networks of long-distance solidarity" (302).

Glickman views the consumer movement, in contrast, as a form of interest group politics that gives consumers "a place at the table in a pluralistic...