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IN 1992, CYNTHIA WRIGHT noted that "[r]emarkably little Canadian work has been done, whether by labour, social, or feminist historians, to document and to theorize the impact of consumer culture."(1) Over the past decade, many scholars have altered this situation, and recently several works addressing Canadian consumer history have appeared. Together this scholarship tells historians much about the rise and transformation of consumption in Canada. Perhaps most importantly, we now know that the late 19th century was a formative moment in Canadian consumer history. Some of Canada's inhabitants became interested in shopping for, purchasing, using, and enjoying commodities during this period. These interests in turn were related to state expansion, industrialization, urbanization, democratization, and immigration.(2) By the 1920s, many workers and farmers joined the urban middle class
Donica Belisle, "Toward a Canadian Consumer History," Labour/Le Travail, 52 (Fall 2003), 181-206. as consumers in the capitalist marketplace and, between the 1960s and 1990s, Canadian residents across social and economic spectrums became members of modern consumer society.(3)
The small explosion of interest in the history of Canadian consumption 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.
Since the formation of commodity-centred capitalism, critical dialogue around consumption has been necessary, but it is our contemporary global political economy that makes such debate pressing. Although they rarely reflect on it, contemporary Canadian workers' consumer interests are helping to sustain economic globalization. Most often, the free market's expansion creates gains for northern consumers, corporations, and governments, and losses for southern producers and governments. Yet, northerners suffer its consequences. As multinationals close northern factories and relocate to southern export zones; as corporations slash permanent jobs to replace them with "flexible" ones; and as governments around the world relax environmental laws, wage- and salary-earners all over the planet suffer the economic, social, and ecological devastations...