| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Methods/Theory

Roger Horowitz and Arwen Mohun, editors. His and Hers: Gender, Consumption, and Technology. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. 1998. Pp. vi, 240. Cloth $49.50, paper $18.50.

During the last decade, many historians of technology have questioned both management-driven and neo-Marxist approaches to consumption. Rejecting the notion that corporations easily manipulate consumers, the eight contributors to this volume show that manufacturers of glassware, chocolates, phonographs, radios, and appliances made false starts and had to struggle to interpret consumer desires. Their well-written essays, which focus on North America between 1840 and 1960, demonstrate the value of analyzing consumption as both a material and a cultural process. They found active consumers who collectively engaged in complex negotiations with producers, facilitated by mediators such as home economists working for utilities and buyers for department stores. 1

An excellent introduction by Steven Lubar attacks the schematic opposition between male production and female consumption, discussing examples of women as producers, men as consumers, and shared leisure activities, in which the dichotomy breaks down. Lubar concludes that the form, meaning, and use of technologies are all negotiated and that a complex chain of meanings, including gender attributions, is embedded in any product as it passes through design, manufacture, marketing, purchase, and use. . . .

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