Buying for America—consumption as patriotism.
3/10/2003
Today Americans are actively encouraged by political leaders to visit malls, plan family vacations to Disney World and, in general, to consume as part of their patriotic contribution to the war against terrorism. Lizabeth Cohen, in her engrossing new book, A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America, traces the origin of this link between consumption and patriotism that developed in postwar America. Cohen, a professor of American Studies at Harvard University, coins the phrase "Consumers' Republic" to describe a world in which the economy, culture, and politics are "built around the promises of mass consumption, both in terms of material life and the more idealistic goals of greater freedom, democracy, and equality." Cohen traces how mass consumption shaped twentieth century American economic, social, and political life and leaves readers with the intriguing question of how this inheritance of consumption can best be used in the twenty-first.