The history of women's involvement in politics has focused most heavily on electoral politics, but throughout the twentieth century a far wider range of women has engaged in political activity when they found it increasingly challenging to feed their families and balance their household ledgers. The Politics of the Pantry examines the rise and fall of the American housewife as a political constituency group. It examines how working- and middle-class housewives' relationship with the state evolved over the course of the century. Shifting the focus away from the workplace as a site of protest, it looks to the homefront as a starting point for protest in the public sphere. Emily Twarog has selected key moments when working- and middle-class women used consumer actions to embrace their socially ascribed roles as mothers and wives to demand economic stability for their families and communities. These include the Depression-era meat boycott of 1935, the consumer coalitions of the New Deal, and the wave of consumer protests between 1965 and 1973. She frames her narrative around the lives of several key labor and consumer activists and their organizations in both urban and suburban areas - Detroit, greater Chicago, Long Island, and Los Angeles. This geographic and chronological span allows for a national story from the progressive politics of the New Deal to the election of Ronald Reagan and the emergence of the conservative right. With a focus on food consumption rather than production, the book looks closely at the ways in food - specifically meat - was used by women as a political tool. These women both challenged and embraced the social and economic order, rather than simply being an oppositional force. And the domestic politics they engaged in, Twarog argues, were not simply the feminine version of labor activism nor auxiliary to the masculine solidarity of unions. Exploring the intersections of labor, community, home, and the market, POLITICS OF THE PANTRY makes a strong case for the connection of the domestic sphere and the formation of women's political and class identity in America.

About the Author
Emily E. LB. Twarog is an Assistant Professor of Labor Studies and American History in the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Reviews
"Who knew that American housewives were up in arms throughout the last century about rising food prices and misleading package information. Twarog traces the history of how these movements developed, their connections to unions and women's auxiliaries, and how twentieth-century politics systematically destroyed them. Her book has much to teach us about what's needed to preserve--and strengthen--today's food movements."--Marion Nestle, author of Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning) "Politics of the Pantry puts breadmakers, not breadwinners, at the center of American women's activism. By capturing the recurrent struggles over food from the 1930s to the 1970s, this beautiful, illuminating study shows how women used their supposedly dependent status as housewives to assert political power and secure a more just, prosperous society. An important revisioning of feminism and feminist history."--Dorothy Sue Cobble, author of The Other Women's Movement "Politics of the Pantry makes an original and well-researched contribution to the historical literature by examining 'the rise and fall of the housewife,' not as a private, domesticated figure but as a public, activist figure. By treating the home rather than the workplace as the site of struggle and by depicting consumption rather than production as a central public act, Twarog turns the usual approach of labor history on its head, with thought-provoking implications."--Lawrence Glickman, Cornell University "For Twarog, women derived the gravitas they needed to speak out on political issues from their role as homemakers who had to make financial ends meet...The housewives of the consumers movement...worried about maintaining their lifestyle and saw feminism not as a means of salvation but as a threat. In perhaps the most important part of her story to the development of our current ideological structure, Twarog explains in great detail how second-wave feminism failed to connect with housewives more concerned about meat prices than fishes and bicycles...This provided, Twarog explains, an opportunity for 'traditional family values' activists like Phyllis Schlafly to take up the mantle of the housewife."--Kristin Kanthak, Journal of Politics



Book Information
ISBN 9780190685591
Author Emily E. LB. Twarog
Format Hardback
Page Count 208
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 422g
Dimensions(mm) 157mm * 244mm * 20mm