Tad Skotnicki - The Sympathetic Consumer: Moral Critique in Capitalist Culture

CULTURE AND ECONOMIC LIFE

EDITORS

Frederick Wherry

Jennifer C. Lena

EDITORIAL BOARD

Gabriel Abend

Michel Anteby

Nina Bandelj

Shyon Baumann

Katherine Chen

Nigel Dodd

Amir Goldberg

David Grazian

Wendy Griswold

Brayden King

Charles Kirschbaum

Omar Lizardo

Bill Maurer

Elizabeth Pontikes

Gabriel Rossman

Lyn Spillman

Klaus Weber

Christine Williams

Viviana Zelizer

THE SYMPATHETIC CONSUMER

Moral Critique in Capitalist Culture

TAD SKOTNICKI

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Stanford, California

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Stanford, California

2021 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Skotnicki, Tad, author.

Title: The sympathetic consumer : moral critique in capitalist culture / Tad Skotnicki.

Other titles: Culture and economic life.

Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2021. | Series: Culture and economic life | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020033193 (print) | LCCN 2020033194 (ebook) | ISBN 9781503614635 (cloth) | ISBN 9781503627734 (paperback) | ISBN 9781503627741 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Consumer movementsUnited StatesHistory. | Consumer movementsGreat BritainHistory. | Consumers leaguesUnited StatesHistory. | Consumers leaguesGreat BritainHistory. | Consumption (Economics)Moral and ethical aspectsUnited StatesHistory. | Consumption (Economics)Moral and ethical aspectsGreat BritainHistory.

Classification: LCC HC110.C6 S565 2021 (print) | LCC HC110.C6 (ebook) | DDC 306.30941dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020033193

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020033194

Cover design: Rob Ehle

Cover images: From Hull House Maps and Papers, Florence Kelley, 1895. Graciously provided by the Florence Kelley website at the Northwestern University Library.

Typeset by Kevin Barrett Kane in 10/14 Minion Pro

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

When I was a teenager, I spent an unhealthy amount of time sprawled out in front of the stereo squinting at liner notes. Years later I find something similar, if perhaps a bit less cryptic, in these sections of books. In that spirit, I offer these remarks.

I began this project in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. There I was fortunate to meet Rick Biernacki, who showed me how to seek fundamental questions and, moreover, to learn as much from the answers that I couldnt give as from those that I attempted to give. While always insisting on precision, he nevertheless opened up a space for thinking in a world that often seems to crowd it out. Jeff Haydu always met my flights of fancy with a quick wit, genuine interest, and a keen eye for both ungainly prose and bloated thinking. Kwai Ng helped me discern what I wanted to do and modeled a kind of intellectual patience that I am still trying to learn. Isaac Martin insisted on analytical clarity where I may not have noticed that it was needed. Erika Rappaport risked joining a committee in a foreign discipline at the other end of the Surfliner. But without her insistence on the importance of the consumer co-operatives, among other insights, this would have been a much weaker project. The debts I owe to those already mentioned will be evident in this book, though, like any true debt, I cannot imagine how they could be repaid. I must also thank other faculty and staff in sociology and beyond, who supported me as I wandered into many blind alleys, in particular: Amy Binder, Stan Chodorow, Harvey Goldman, Robert Horwitz, Rebecca Plant, and Stefan Tanaka.