The rise of the sympathetic consumer -- Abolitionist visions -- Turn-of-the-twentieth-century visions -- Practicing sympathetic consumption -- Moral arguments -- The sympathetic consumer, challenged -- Whither the sympathetic consumer?
In capitalist societies, consumers use a range of goods mass produced under conditions of they know very little. Over the last two centuries, many consumer activists have sought to remedy this ignorance and promote ethical purchasing as a solution to problems such as labor exploitation, poverty, and public health issues. This dissertation examines the late nineteenth and early twentieth century origins of modern consumer activism as it arose out of consumers' encounter with anonymous goods. By comparing three pioneering groups of consumer activists -- the National Consumers' League, the Co-operative Wholesale Society, and the Women's Co-operative Guild -- we can see how this basic problem of anonymous mass-produced goods shaped their activism. It draws on the extensive archival records of these groups as well as their contemporaries to trace and compare the dynamics of their activism. Despite their contrasting origins, character, and structure, these turn-of-the-twentieth-century activists defined the problem of anonymous goods similarly. Activists also pursued similar strategies to encourage others to purchase ethically-made goods: to make consumers see through the anonymous commodities into the conditions under which distant workers labored. Although they were confronted with similar problems, activists sometimes pursued different paths in accordance with their contrasting origins, character, and structure. Thus, when in conflict with labor unions and businesses or with unruly consumer desires, these groups pursued distinctive solutions to the basic problem of anonymous goods. Ultimately, this dissertation shows that activists pursued similar strategies when they addressed the problem of anonymous goods directly. However, when they appealed to consumers, laborers, or other groups, they differed along familiar lines such as class, gender, national origin, and organizational form.
When people encounter consumer goods—sugar, clothes, phones—they find little to no information about their origins. The goods will thus remain anonymous, and the labor that went into making them, the supply chain through which they traveled, will remain obscured. In this book, Tad Skotnicki argues that this encounter is an endemic feature of capitalist societies, and one with which consumers have struggled for centuries in the form of activist movements constructed around what he calls The Sympathetic Consumer. This book documents the uncanny similarities shared by such movements over the course of three centuries: the transatlantic abolitionist movement, US and English consumer movements around the turn of the twentieth century, and contemporary Fair Trade activism. Offering a comparative historical study of consumer activism the book shows, in vivid detail, how activists wrestled with the broader implications of commodity exchange. These activists arrived at a common understanding of the relationship between consumers, producers, and commodities, and concluded that consumers were responsible for sympathizing with invisible laborers. Ultimately, Skotnicki provides a framework to identify a capitalist culture by examining how people interpret everyday phenomena essential to it.
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