2012/07/01 by Jonathan E. Robins · 4 citations
Social Sciences · #African history and culture studies #Colonialism, slavery, and trade #Australian History and Society #Consumerism #Consumption (sociology) #Politics #Agency (philosophy) #Commodity #Period (music) #Economic history #Political science #Economy #Political economy #Sociology #History #Social science #Economics #Law #Art #Market economy #Aesthetics
paper · doi:10.1017/s0010417512000242
published in Comparative Studies in Society and History 54(3), 592-611 (Cambridge University Press)
openalex publication_date 2012/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Abstract Over the last two decades, consumption, consumerism, and the idea of consumer agency have attracted a great deal attention from scholars across a number of disciplines. Among historians, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have been identified as a crucial period for consumption, one in which consumers emerged as an influential group of political, economic, and social agents. Historians of the English-speaking world have advanced bold claims about the prominence and impact of consumers during this period. Consumer movements were conspicuously absent in two major scandals of the early twentieth century, however. This article uses these commodity-centered cases—of rubber in the Congo Free State, and cocoa in the Portuguese colonies of São Tomé and Príncipe—to question the salience of “consumerism” in turn-of-the-century political thought. By tracing the career of British journalist and humanitarian activist E. D. Morel through the “red rubber” and “slave cocoa” scandals, the article demonstrates that consumers were only one of many influences along the commodity chain of production and consumption.