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

For all the accusations that are persistently made against the culture of consumption, one always stands out: that consumption is antithetical to citizenship and that it directs our energies towards private gratification rather than the public good. Over the past decade or so, a number of historians have demonstrated that this has not always been the case. Consumers have often acted as citizens and they have brought a politics, an ethics and even an ideology to their consuming decisions. Lawrence Glickman's wide-ranging survey of consumer activism provides a near definitive guide to the history of these types of politicised consumption in America since the 18^th century. As he states in his preface, he sees consumption "not as the negation of citizenship, but as an instrument of solidarity, a mode of ethical agency, and a bridge to healing relationships with both nature and the animate world" [p. x].

Buying Power builds on a by now well-established US literature on the history of consumer movements, of boycotts, of 'consumer-citizens', of the political economy of consumption, and of consumer politics more generally. Indeed, Glickman's earlier works (including his monograph, A Living Wage, and his reader, Consumer Society in American History, both published by Cornell University Press in 1997 and 1999 respectively) have proved influential in encouraging others to examine the political aspects of consumer society. Buying Power takes on board all of the findings of this new research, synthesises it and contributes additional excellent archival work in offering an authoritative guide to all forms of consumer activism.

The book begins with an analysis of the consumer protests of the American revolution, demonstrating the extent to which participants in the Tea Party drew as much on older notions of consumption as use as they did on novel concepts of consumption as purchase. Glickman emphasises that the consumer protestors of the American Revolution operated in a period of transition rather than one of a radically new attitude to goods. This is an important point, as Glickman argues persuasively that too often successive generations of consumer activists believe themselves to be the pioneers of this political tactic. Historians too, often acknowledge the events of the eighteenth century but then assume that consumer activism did not really gather momentum until the late-nineteenth century. Glickman corrects this mistake, and the first third of the book takes us through a diverse range of consumer protests, from anti-slavery campaigners, to the 'rebel consumers' of the Southern nonintercourse movement, and on to the widespread take-off of the boycott as a political tactic in the 1880s.

He then overviews magisterially the tremendous range of consumer organisations and consumer politics emerging from the Progressive era through to the New Deal. He covers particularly well the National Consumers' League, the League of Women Shoppers and the two organisations most closely associated with transforming consumer activism into a consumer movement: Consumers Research and Consumers Union (the latter emerging from the former following a strike by staff in 1936). The final section traces consumer activism as an exemplar of the changing fortunes of liberalism in postwar America. Here, Glickman importantly asserts the significance of Consumers Union, showing it to be more than an organisation promoting rational self interest, and he deftly details the persistent opposition to organised consumerism, especially that associated with Ralph Nader. The New Right ultimately made liberalism a dirty word, as shown in Glickman's case study of the failure to pass legislation creating a Consumer Protection Agency in the 1970s. This shows how organised business, lobby groups and think tanks increasingly associated liberalism with meddlesome big government, and just how significant the movement for consumer protection was to the development of this strand of US politics.

It is difficult to criticise such a well-researched and elegantly presented book. It is comprehensive and yet succinct, and Glickman has a keen and expert eye for focussing on events and organisations which bring out the broader...