Sophisticates or Dupes? Attitudes toward Food Consumers in Edwardian Britain
本文研究爱德华时代英国改革者、制造商和商人如何认知食品消费者,以及这些认知如何影响食品质量与监管的讨论,揭示了关于消费者利益、能力和关切的矛盾形象。
In this article, we explore how reformers, manufacturers, and traders perceived British food consumers and the significance of those perceptions in debates about food quality and regulation. By considering basic commodities, our analysis extends a literature on consumption that is otherwise derived primarily from the study of luxury commodities, and it identifies conflicting images of the interests, competence, and concerns of early twentieth-century consumers. We find that discussions of appropriate policy involved competing interpretations of modernity and its implications for food consumers, and these discussions anticipated later twentieth-century debates.