Through a comparative approach, Marie-Emmanuelle Chessel traces the progressive construction of the figure of the consumer of XVIIIe At XXe century. Breaking the double archetype of a free or passive consumer, the work focuses on the figure of “ ordinary consumer » whose story remains to be told.
During the recent food scandals which highlighted the undeclared use of horse meat in prepared dishes, politicians and representatives of consumer associations spoke out vigorously to denounce the lies and fraud suffered by buyers of these products. These positions put at the heart of public discourse the figure of “ consumer » – innocent victim sacrificed on the altar of greed or political actor fighting for his rights. They have nothing to surprise us, as they are familiar to an inhabitant of rich countries, who have been part of a consumer society for several decades and are periodically agitated by this type of debate.
Marie-Emmanuelle Chessel’s work comes at the right time to remind us that the centrality of consumption in our societies has a history and that the figure of the consumer which emerges from these discourses is the fruit of a political and social struggle, between different conceptions of the buyer’s place. The first necessary synthesis on the history of consumption, this book will be useful both to students and curious people who are discovering these questions, and to researchers engaged in this field who needed a complete overview of the historiography. It mainly concerns the history of consumption in France, but it must be clarified from the outset that this country is always placed in a much larger geographical framework and that the text multiplies the elements of comparison, with the United States and the rest of Europe (England, Germany), but also with less known countries and less frequently cited in studies on consumption (China and Saudi Arabia, for example). The broad chronological framework, from the end of the XVIIIe century at the end of XXe century, allows both to reconstruct large-scale movements and to question the different chronologies, which can overlap or contradict each other depending on the points of view retained to carve out the history of consumption.
The answer to the question “ when does the consumer society begin? ? » depends in fact on the definition criteria used: are we interested in the social categories who start to consume, in the type of goods purchased, in the prices of objects or in the importance taken by these questions in the discourse of the actors ? The elements of the debate around this chronology were previously scattered and the first two chapters of this work allow us to bring together the knowledge, to order it and to discuss the relevance of the temporal caesuras. The following four chapters are organized thematically around areas of research that Marie-Emmanuelle Chessel knows well from her previous work: the question of the Americanization of France, experts in consumer society, gender and organized consumption.
Towards the consumer society
The first chapter, entitled “ Genesis of the consumer society (XVIIIe–XIXe century) » presents the original cut generally retained by historians and sometimes called “ consumer revolution » (consumer revolution). This time, the second half of XVIIIe century, experienced three major transformations: a general increase in wealth, the emergence of economic thought – mercantilist and liberal – and the invention of new industrial and commercial methods. THE XIXe century is characterized by the invention of a new culture of bourgeois consumption, including department stores, renamed “ cathedrals of consumption ”, have often been made a symbol. The author returns quickly but clearly to the historiography of these businesses to highlight the novelty that they represented but also to put their weight into perspective and not fall into a simplistic opposition between archaism and modernity.
The second chapter, “ At XXe century: towards contemporary consumer society “, describes a period that is more familiar to us. Marie-Emmanuelle Chessel, however, warns against a teleological vision by recalling that the progression towards mass consumption is not necessarily linear: it presents in particular the backlash effects caused, during wars, by situations of shortage. and rationing. The Thirty Glorious Years are then described in detail, with the rapid development of new goods, such as household appliances and cars. During this period of the Cold War, mass consumption became a political issue: the United States considered that it went hand in hand with democratization, whileUSSR and its satellites attempt to promote alternative models. These issues find an echo in France around the Communist Party’s fight against Americanization which is embodied, for example in 1950, in an attempt at an anti-Coca-Cola law, the result of a convenient alliance between the communists and the lobbies. mineral water and wine. Two interpretations of mass consumption then clash: the optimists, with Jean Fourastié, see the consumer society as an asset, while virulent critiques also develop, embodied in particular by Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord and Roland Barthes.
Chapter 3 is a close discussion of the notion of “ Americanization » via consumption which can be defined as the idea that “ the transatlantic flow of people, institutions, capital, methods and objects relating to consumer society tends, generally speaking, to go from the United States to the rest of the world » (p. 45), a phenomenon which would have been particularly strong in France and in Europe from the 1920s to the 1960s. Marie-Emmanuelle Chessel puts this observation into perspective, from the renewed perspective of a transatlantic history which emphasizes three elements. First of all, it is necessary to take into account the long duration and to study these flows since the end of the XIXe century. Then, we must be attentive to the concrete conditions for the appropriation of a model: associations, advertisers and managers “ do not passively adopt the American model but they translate new ideas and institutional proposals into their own configuration » (p. 52), because they all go to look for something in the United States that they lack in Europe. Finally, these exchanges are reciprocal and some research is beginning to focus on European influence on Americans.
Figures and representations of the consumer
The last three chapters are devoted to some of the specific actors who construct the consumer society. The work first focuses on “ the market making experts » (chapter 4), whether it concerns bosses or sales specialists (advertisers, marketers, designers, merchandisers), then presents “ the type of consumption », study of both the figures of the consumer (the kleptomaniac bourgeoisie, the housewife, the collector, the dandy or the handyman) and the producers of these gender norms (chapter 5). These are not fixed and can evolve thanks to the arrival of women in advertising careers or the militant commitment of certain consumers who push them to challenge these stereotypes or to use them to speak out. as consumer experts. This feminine commitment via consumption is also the subject of an in-depth analysis in another book by Marie-Emmanuelle Chessel, published at the same time as this summary and which focuses on the Social League of Buyers.
The latest development of the book, entitled “ When consumers organize themselves » unfolds a more general presentation of these militant movements of the end of the XIXe century to the present day and describes their division into two major trends. On the one hand, ethical consumption (called fair trade around 1900) emphasizes the duties of consumers, because it seeks to moralize consumption and draw attention to the working conditions of producers. On the other hand, activists can group themselves into consumer associations which defend the rights of consumers to buy cheaper or safer and better quality products. The best known of these associations in France is the Union Fédérale des Consommateurs (Union Fédérale des Consommateurs).CFU), famous for his review What to Choose ?published since 1961.
The reasons for reading this summary are numerous, but we must first emphasize the comparative dimension of the work. Marie-Emmanuelle Chessel deploys in-depth knowledge of other historiographies, particularly English and American literature, which allows us to always put the French case into perspective and therefore to question its specificities, particularly chronological – like the thesis of “ French delay » in terms of advertising, here put into perspective. The author also brings different types of history into dialogue – economic, social, cultural, political, gender – and offers a complete and complex analysis of the multifaceted phenomenon that is the consumer society.
Another strong point of the work is linked to the specific tools of this collection, which are particularly well used here. The final bibliography, mainly in French and English, is a solid starting point for anyone who wants to find their way in the historiography of consumption and each reference has often been described along the way in a synthetic way. The numerous boxes provide an opportunity to present sources (the monographs of Le Play, a leaflet from the Social League of Buyers), to detail practices (consumer credit, waste management, the property market). second-hand) or to develop specific examples of goods from the consumer society (Wedgwood earthenware in XVIIIe century, shoes during the Second World War or the Razanne and Fulla dolls, competitors of Barbie for Muslim buyers).
In a programmatic conclusion to the work, Marie-Emmanuelle Chessel presents the limits and shortcomings of historical research on consumption. The elites of the consumer society – the bosses, craftsmen or traders, the marketersreformers or activist consumers – like social science researchers, have constructed two opposing archetypes of the consumer who is perceived as passive or as entirely free. The historian invites us to move away from this sterile opposition to think about a dialectical relationship between domination and resistance. She calls for greater interest in “ ordinary consumers » which are part of a restrictive framework, within which they can possibly “ resist the injunctions that weigh on them or invent specific uses for the goods and services offered to them » (p. 101). Marie-Emmanuelle Chessel then underlines that “ their history largely remains to be written “.