Consumers Against Capitalism?: Consumer Cooperation in Europe, North America, and Japan, 1840D1990 [Paperback]

There is a growing scholarly interest in the historical development of what has been called a consumer society. In this important collection of essays, historians from six different countries trace the history of the consumer cooperative movement in much of western Europe and North America from its inception to the present. The consumer cooperative, as the contributors show, bears directly on the role of socialist parties, the nascent feminist movement, and conceptions of the worker's role in a changing economy and society in the 19th and 20th centuries. The first book to explore consumer cooperation on a comparative, international level,Consumers Against Capitalismfills a significant gap in the literature of labor history. It also makes a significant contribution to the literature on consumerism and capitalist culture. It is essential reading for students and scholars of labor history, women's history, and social movements.

Ellen Furloughis associate professor of history at Kenyon College and the author ofConsumer Cooperation in France, 1834-1930: The Politics of Consumption(Cornell).

Carl Strikwerdais associate professor of history and chair of the European studies program at the University of Kansas. He is the author ofA House Divided: Catholics, Socialists, and Flemish Nationalists in Nineteenth Century Belgium(Rowman & Littlefield, 1997) and the editor, with Camille Guerin-Gonzales, ofThe Politics of Immigrant Workers: Labor Activism and Migration in the World Economy since 1830.

An important book on a topic of considerable current interest. Timothy Guinnane, Yale University

[This anthology] constitutes an insightful and stimulating first step towards the explanation of the infrastructure of consumption in the age of capitalism. . . It is to the great merit of Ellen Furlough and Carl Strikwerda to have drawn attention to the possibility of historical alternatives in an area as seemingly natló-