Captains of Consciousness Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture by Stuart Ewen

Author:Stuart Ewen [STUART EWEN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2012-02-21T05:00:00+00:00

As the industrialization of American society and the decomposition of traditional family bonds gave rise to radical libertarian thought, it became all the more important for industrial ideology itself to be agile. Given the antisocial character of a productive system which had routinized work into a series of time-managed, mechanical gestures, the family—the scene of leisure and consumption—continued to be a repository of social relations. For the radicals as well as the newly conscious ideologues of business, the image of the family characterized the good life. Yet while Gilman and Dell had seen the family as a reinvigorated soil for romantic affection, no longer economically defined, the attitudes of business saw it as soil for more profitable growth. Countering an ideology which envisioned the reconciliation of love and affection, people in the business community maintained an economic view of the subject. For them, love appeared a realm for entrepreneurial excavation. Romanticism, which from its medieval inception had posed as a critical alternative to patriarchal authority, now appeared in two distinct forms. While some radicals saw it as the kernel of a nonauthoritarian future, businessmen saw it as a profitable weapon against an outmoded authority in favor of a new one.

Christine Frederick, who had inveighed against the formation of consumer protective organizations, saw “a direct and vital business interest in the subject of young love and marriage.” Trying to reconcile the continuation of the family with the home inculcation of industrial values, she spoke to her businessman colleagues in straightforward terms:

Every business day approximately 5,ooo new homes are begun; new “nests” are constructed and new family purchasing units begin operation. . . . The founding and furnishing of new homes is a major industrial circumstance in the United States.36

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