Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Department Stores, 1890-1940

by Susan Porter Benson

Book Overview

The luxurious appearance and handsome profits of American department stores from 1890 to 1940 masked a three-way struggle among saleswomen, managers, and customers for control of the selling floor. Counter Cultures explores the complex nature and contradictions of the conflict in an arena where class, gender, and the emerging culture of consumption all came together. The result is a fascinating illumination of the emotional labor of the workplace...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 025206013X
• ISBN13: 9780252060137
• Release Date: December 1987
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Length: 344 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

An insightful look at a long neglected topics

Department stores have been too long neglected in the field of U.S. cultural history and when they are examined, tend to be treated in terms of nostalgia or as studies of their wealthy founders. Benson finally gives us a more complete look at the web of relationships -- highly gendered relationships -- that made these emporiums so work. She not only reveals that it took an ever-changing balance of gendered roles to make the stores thrive, but that the department store played a much larger role in shaping American identities than historians typically consider. Thoroughly researched and wonderfully insightful.

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book was as good as described, like new. Shipped on time. recommend seller. I will use in the future with doubt.

An excellent contribution to several historical fields.

Benson writes about department stores' development as the new purveyors of mass culture and as the setting for a dynamic intersection of class and gender. She describes the encounters of saleswomen, managers, and customers in this retail environment between 1890 and 1940. Benson accomplishes this by combing through various journals and newspapers, and the results of this research are placed into perspective through comparison with other labor historians' work. Although the juxtaposition of Benson's work with others' reveals some flaws, _Counter Cultures_ nevertheless presents an important and vivid picture of a service industry, a neglected area of labor history