From Headshops to Whole Foods: The Rise and Fall of Activist Entrepreneurs by Joshua Clark Davis (review)

The idea that the American counter-culture of the 1960s and 1970s operated in an autonomous sphere outside society might be seductive, but it is mostly misleading. In From Headshops to Whole Foods: The Rise and Fall of Activist Entrepreneurs, Joshua Clark Davis reconciles this tension by focusing on what he calls "activist entrepreneurs." These business people felt they could help their causes through the creation of businesses tailored for like-minded people and designed as outlets for the counter-culture and for protest movements. In the postwar years, several classes of Americans were to various extents excluded from the new consensus of consumerism and conformity because of rampant racism, sexism, and a general suspicion of non-conformists. Rather than just fight for civil rights, gender rights, and the right to smoke pot and eat better food, these activists carved new spaces for the downtrodden and the marginal that allowed them to be part of a solidarity economy and to mingle with like-minded individuals in those dedicated spaces.

Head shop managers catered for the psychedelic culture by selling drug literature, paraphernalia, and various artefacts designed to enhance experimentation with mind-altering substances. African-American civil rights activists reasoned that they could help their cause by selling books about Black history and culture, and extended this particular form of activism to foreign countries. Some American women built alternative presses to disseminate feminist and lesbian literature and to further the larger feminist cause. Finally, several Americans were appalled by problems with food quality and believed that society should have easy access to organic and local produce to counter the food industry that was responsible for unethical and environmentally unsound production. Four chapters examine these four topics, which form the bulk of the book.

In the introductory chapter Davis reminds us that the early civil rights activists endorsed cooperative endeavours, that Marx and Engels themselves supported democratically structured businesses, and suggests that preference for small businesses rather than free-market economics hints at an anarchist influence. Activist entrepreneurs were also suspicious of the US government because of "the dehumanizing, alienating effects of large bureaucratic structures" (23) — though Davis makes it clear this rejection of the state differed from conservative criticisms of Big Government. But "[w]hat set activist entrepreneurs apart from earlier admirers of small enterprise was their fusion of the small-business ethos with contemporary counterculture and leftist activism." (33)

Needless to say that organizing these alternative places and cultures was fraught with many difficulties. At the heart of those spaces, there was always the tricky question of what should be done with the profits (particularly for female and lesbian businesses), even though most entrepreneurs claimed that their businesses were more interested in bringing about social and political change than in financial gains. Additionally, "Collectives' heavy emphasis on consensus and ideological unity often made their memberships politically, economically, and educationally homogenous" (22). The white educated middle-class was overrepresented within the ranks of activists, while working-class people could ill-afford to take time off to help the causes. Further, these businesses suffered from a state-sponsored backlash that shows "how much they threatened accepted norms of political expression and business enterprise," (23) which in turn exacerbated anti-state sentiments.

In the late 1970s and beyond, activist businesses were on the decline. Many shed their militancy and recast themselves as trying to make a legitimate living. Nonetheless, "their success is visible in how widespread and unremarkable many of their products and principles have become" (34) as seen in the successes of Black literature, female-run businesses, cannabis legalization, and a growing solidarity economy. Of course Whole Foods is arguably the most visible success of the health food movement, but Davis also does well to add that their longest-lasting legacy "may be the language of liberation and social change they have bequeathed...