Editor's Note

When the nineteenth-century American missionary Josiah String asked "what is the process of civilizing but the creation of more and higher wants?" he may or may not have had the female consumer in mind. Nonetheless, the developmentalist logic of his question has a highly gendered dimension that this issue and the one preceding it aim, together, to capture.¹ As Clare Haru Crowston wrote in her introduction to volume 18, issue 3 of the Journal—Part I of our special double issue on gender and consumption—the phenomenon of women consumers and their gendered experiences appears to be very much on the mind of contemporary historians, who flocked to her call for papers on the subject almost two years ago. The result is a total of eight essays—including the four on offer here, in Part II of the special issue—as well as an introduction by Crowston (18.3) and a reflective concluding essay by Victoria de Grazia below (18.4). From the vicissitudes of the Australian housewife through the "respectable cleanliness" afforded by the introduction of the washing machine in postwar Chile, we are treated to an equal measure of original archival evidence and imaginative interpretive skill as contributors reckon with modern consumer culture in all its national variety and historical specificity. Rather than rehearse the many insights and contributions of the two issues, we refer you to the framing essays by Crowston and de Grazia and more directly, to the splendid articles and book reviews that both proceed and follow.