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Work, Consumption and Subjectivity in Postwar France: Moulinex and the Meanings of Domestic Appliances 1950s-1970s.

Work, Consumption and Subjectivity in Postwar France: Moulinex and the Meanings of Domestic Appliances 1950s-1970s.
Work, Consumption and Subjectivity in Postwar France: Moulinex and the Meanings of Domestic Appliances 1950s-1970s.
This article responds to some of the limitations of the historiography of consumption in contemporary Europe, notably its tendency to divorce consumer culture from production and to subscribe, in some cases at least, to a rather schematic model of ‘consumer society’. Focusing on the Moulinex domestic appliance company which developed in Normandy from the late 1950s, it explores the interpenetration of cultures of production and cultures of production at several levels. It considers the role of Moulinex in making domestic appliances available to the mass market, the place of productivism in the Moulinex brand and the place of appliance consumption in company culture, before reflecting on the workers’ perspective on this culture and the meanings they ascribed to the appliances they acquired through the company.
0022-0094
Clarke, Jackie
3e90b310-7589-4372-9598-dfe510fc4476
Clarke, Jackie
3e90b310-7589-4372-9598-dfe510fc4476

Clarke, Jackie (2012) Work, Consumption and Subjectivity in Postwar France: Moulinex and the Meanings of Domestic Appliances 1950s-1970s. Journal of Contemporary History, 47 (4). (In Press)

Record type: Article

Abstract

This article responds to some of the limitations of the historiography of consumption in contemporary Europe, notably its tendency to divorce consumer culture from production and to subscribe, in some cases at least, to a rather schematic model of ‘consumer society’. Focusing on the Moulinex domestic appliance company which developed in Normandy from the late 1950s, it explores the interpenetration of cultures of production and cultures of production at several levels. It considers the role of Moulinex in making domestic appliances available to the mass market, the place of productivism in the Moulinex brand and the place of appliance consumption in company culture, before reflecting on the workers’ perspective on this culture and the meanings they ascribed to the appliances they acquired through the company.

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Accepted/In Press date: October 2012

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 185335
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/185335
ISSN: 0022-0094
PURE UUID: 6b5e43ef-9ec9-4180-aa2e-31602bf79215

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Date deposited: 10 May 2011 10:24
Last modified: 10 Dec 2021 19:13

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Contributors

Author: Jackie Clarke

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