Call for a planned panel to be held at the European Social Science History Conference in Vienna, Austria, 2014.

The ever expanding production of standardized consumables was one of the most transformative powers in the modern period. It had a significant effect on politics, culture and notions of citizenship. A growing amount of historical research, which was not always free from ideological biases, has focused on consumer goods, consumption practices, or retailing and advertising. But the intersection of consumerism and social politics, or consumerism and collective action, spawned fewer research. Yet it is indisputable that the consumer, as a political category, has historical roots. Consequently, historians and social scientists need to investigate under which circumstances social groups have used consumer concerns to participate in what Tarrow and Tilly have called ‘contentious politics’.

According to Frank Trentmann, episodes of war and rationing were of major importance in the development of a consumer consciousness in Western-Europe and the United States. Scarcity led to food riots, boycotts and eventually state-regulation. However, the political history of the consumer largely sidesteps the mobilizing potential of affluence, and thus the importance of the period after 1945 in the West. It also has not yet incorporated interactions on a global level, or the enduring conditions of scarcity in non-Western contexts. What about consumer claims in the Global South? How did debates on global inequality and ‘stolen’ affluence impact consumer activism in the West?

This panel welcomes papers that focus on the political and contested dimensions of consumption. Scholars and graduate students from the humanities and social and political sciences are invited to reflect on affluence and scarcity, debate and collective action. Consumerism is defined here very broadly in an attempt to overcome the very label of consumerism itself: the focus is not only on certain products or foodstuffs, but also on social services or on how citizenship and social respectability are defined through possessions. Case studies that focus on the colonial and post-colonial world (Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean) are specifically appreciated.

Possible lines of enquiry include:
-Consumption practices as a means for civic action, on local or on global level (e.g. Apartheid)
-Anti-colonial struggles and consumer concerns
-The rejection of ‘Western’ mass consumption society in the formation of a post-colonial identity
-Consumption, democracy and inclusion
-Collective action by working class movements, middle class movements and expert organization that focus on consumption

Please send abstracts (100-500 words) to Giselle.nath@ugent.be before april 30, 2013. The deadline for registration at the European Social Science History Conference is may 15, 2013. Papers in French and English are accepted. People who want to act as chair or discussant are kindly invited to respond.
Please add full names, affiliation, postal address and e-mail, since they are needed to pre-register at the ESSHC.