The Entangled Consumer: Rethinking the Rise of the Consumer after 1945

Abstract

Just as the social categories of class, gender, and religion became unstable during the “age of fracture” (Daniel Rodgers), the idea that we are all consumers was consolidated. The emergence of societies in which the consumer became a pivotal figure during the second half of the twentieth century constitutes a distinct phase in the history of consumption, which impacted the politics of consumption. This article expands the view of political consumption by looking at the institutionalization of the consumer in Dutch political system. In the course of the postwar period, an abstract notion of the consumer became widely accepted. This view was emancipatory, negating existing differences through unifying consumer policies. Focusing on the entanglement of the consumer with other social roles and categories in these negotiations, the article demonstrates that political consumption is not an anomaly, but the result of such entanglements.