Feminists, Food and the Fair Price: The Cost of Living Demonstrations in Melbourne, August-September 1917

Smart, Judith

doi:10.2307/27508786

Cited by 36 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Australian women became entangled in consumer culture from the end of the nineteenth century, explicitly targeted by manufacturers and retailers who used enticements such as sex, modernity and the pleasures of shopping (Conor, 2004; Kingston, 1994; Reekie, 2003; Smart, 1995; 2006; McLeod, 2008; Crawford et al , 2010). Newspaper proprietors and the advertisers that supported their publications soon realised the potential of a woman-focussed paper.…”

Section: Advertising In the Budgetmentioning

confidence: 99%

TheWoman’s BudgetBureau: friendship and consumption in Australia

Dickenson

2016

JHRM

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Purpose This paper aims to reveal the marshalling of an emotion – loneliness – over time for the construction of relationships between advertisers and consumers between 1909 and 1934, paying attention to the shifting contexts in which these relationships were built, maintained and extended. It also draws attention to the ways in which advertising and marketing work in society, and advances the understanding of the development of consumer culture in Australia. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses textual analysis of letters from readers and editorial content published in the magazine over a 25-year period, supplemented by material from newspapers and memoirs. Findings The paper reveals how a women’s magazine marshalled the loneliness of Australian women, especially rural Australian women, to attach them to the magazine and its advertisers. Over 25 years, the magazine editors built a reservoir of trust between readers and the magazine. When the economy turned, this reservoir could be drawn upon to maintain reader attachment and maximise sales. Research limitations/implications This paper examines the use of emotion in just one magazine. A comparative study would be beneficial to see whether this exploitation of emotion was widespread. Practical implications The paper suggests the importance of emotion as a tool for attaching consumers to brands and for maintaining that attachment through financial difficulties. Originality/value This paper supports the turn to the study of emotion in history and, specifically, in the development of consumer culture.

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Section: Advertising In the Budgetmentioning

confidence: 99%

TheWoman’s BudgetBureau: friendship and consumption in Australia

Dickenson

2016

JHRM

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“… J. Smart, ‘Feminists, food and the fair price: The cost of living demonstrations in Melbourne, August‐September 1917’, Labour History , 50 (), 113–131.…”

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confidence: 99%

Historiographic Foodways: A Survey of Food and Drink Histories in Australia

Luckins

2013

History Compass

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This essay is a survey of the field of food and drink history in Australia since the 1970s. It discusses the range of research and picks out key historiographic aspects: the search for an Australian cuisine; regional food cultures; connection between sources and historical interpretation; and the interdisciplinarity of food and drink history. It suggests that as food and drink histories have broadened beyond a search for culinary traditions and a gastronomic sensibility, so our understanding of food and drink in Australian history has deepened. It also argues that food and drink history is more than textual knowledge in books and articles: television programs and exhibitions held in museums and libraries, for example, have enhanced our understanding of food and drink histories. and the School of Tourism and Hospitality Management, respectively. Moreover, there is a wide range of topics in the field: gastronomy, nutrition, drink cultures, cuisine, diet, home economics, dining and agriculture, which at times seem to exist in isolation from each other. In addition, there are diverse theoretical and methodological approaches including statistical data, memoir, literature, cookbooks, oral history, symbolism, experience, ritual, material culture and cultural studies. Perhaps,then, in the first instance, it is the interdisciplinarity and hybridity of scholarship which marks the field of food and drink history in Australia.From the perspective of a historian, questions about food and drink are profoundly historical. The answers add to our knowledge about food preparation, presentation and consumption, and evaluative notions of cuisine and gastronomic quality. Food and drink can be used as a means to generate fresh understandings of broader historical forces to do with migration,

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“…In August and September 1917, women led and dominated a series of violent street demonstrations in Melbourne, Australia, demanding immediate action on the rising cost of living. 4 These are all examples of a women's politics of food that emerged in leading cities of the world in 1917 and 1918. Their shared features include spontaneity, the use or threat of violence, and, most strikingly, the involvement of largely unorganized working-class housewives.…”

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The Politics of Food and Women's Neighborhood Activism in First World War Britain

Hunt

2010

Inter. Labor Working-Class Hist.

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In 1917 and 1918 violent cost-of-living protests, largely peopled by poor urban housewives, erupted across the world. Although Britain did not experience such dramatic events, a women's politics of food can be found in local neighborhoods that touched the lives of unorganized housewives on the wartime home front. The new local committees created to defend consumer interests in the face of food shortages proved to be permeable to some women, particularly those who already had some experience with women's politics. However, limits were placed on this participation and on the self-organization of housewives by the ambiguous understanding of who constituted a consumer and thus who could speak for the ordinary housewife as she battled the food queues. By exploring the women's politics of food at a local level, it is argued that working-class women's participation in Food Vigilance Committees or in local boycotts may have had longer lasting effects in Britain than the more dramatic cost-of-living actions elsewhere.

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Feminists, Food and the Fair Price: The Cost of Living Demonstrations in Melbourne, August-September 1917

Cited by 36 publications

References 0 publications

TheWoman’s BudgetBureau: friendship and consumption in Australia

TheWoman’s BudgetBureau: friendship and consumption in Australia

Historiographic Foodways: A Survey of Food and Drink Histories in Australia

The Politics of Food and Women's Neighborhood Activism in First World War Britain

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