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[This book] traces Canada's transformation into a modern consumer nation back to an era when Eaton’s, Simpson's, and the Hudson’s Bay Company fostered and came to rule the country’s shopping scene. Between 1890 and 1940, department stores revolutionized selling and shopping by parlaying cheap raw materials, business-friendly government policies, and growing demand for low-priced goods into retail empires that promised to meet citizens' needs and strengthen the nation. Some Canadians found happiness and fulfillment in their aisles; others experienced nothing more than a cold shoulder and a closed door. The stores' advertising and public relations campaigns often disguised a darker, more complicated reality that included strikes, union drives, customer complaints, government inquiries, and public criticism. This vivid account of Canadian department stores in their heyday showcases them as powerful agents of nationalism and modernization. But the nation that their catalogues and shopping experience helped to define - white, consumerist, middle-class - was more limited than nostalgic portraits of the early department store suggest. --Publisher's description. Contents: Rise of mass retail -- Creating modern Canada -- Fathers of mass merchandising -- Crafting the consumer workforce -- Shopping, pleasure, and power -- Working at the heart of consumption -- Criticizing the big stores. Includes bibliographical references (p. 274-292) and index.
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The article reviews the book, "The Parlour & the Suburb: Domestic Identities, Class, Femininity and Modernity," by Judy Giles.
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The article reviews the book, "The Freedom to Smoke: Tobacco Consumption and Identity," by Jarrett Rudy.
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The article reviews and comments on several books including "Creeping Conformity: How Canada Became Suburban, 1900-1960," by Richard Harris, "Manufacturing Suburbs: Building Work and Home on the Metropolitan Fringe," by Robert Lewis and "A Great Duty: Canadian Responses to Modern Life and Mass Culture, 1939-1967," by Len Kuffert.
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Between 1890 and 1940 Canada's three largest department stores -- Eaton's Simpson's, and the Hudson's Bay Company -- developed a multifacted system of employee commodification. Not only did they encourage their employees to become avid consumers, so did they market their employees' activities, interests, and bodies. They undertook these commodiyfing gestures in an attempt to extract value from their workforces. Investigating the rise and operation of commodification at these major retailers, this paper offers new insights into corporate management systems, demonstrates that commodification had negative consequences for employees, and provides fresh perspectives on 20th-century consumer capitalism.
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The article reviews the book, "Silicon Valley, Women, and the California Dream: Gender, Class, and Opportunity in the Twentieth Century," by Glenna Matthews.
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The small explosion of interest in the history of Canadian consumption [over the past decade] has generated important insights into the material, cultural, and political histories of North America. It also illustrates that a vast potential for more research into Canadian consumption exists. Arguing that a rigorous theorization of the field of Canadian consumer history would now be timely and beneficial, this essay highlights themes emerging in Canadian and international consumer historiography and suggests areas of further inquiry. Its comments are not meant to be definitive, but are rather intended to spark discussion on consumer history's past, present, and future. --From authors' introduction
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This article reviews the book, "A Small Price to Pay: Consumer Culture on the Canadian Home Front, 1939-45," by Graham Broad.
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