Contenu du sommaire

“Being a Good Customer is not Enough”. Cooperatives and Consumer Society in the American Midwest (1917-1940)This paper offers a case study of a federation of consumers' cooperatives in the Midwest, the Cooperative Central Exchange (CCE), between 1917 and the 1930s. It aims to show the importance of this kind of business for historians of consumption, while contributing directly to several important debates within this field of research. Organised in 1917 by Finnish immigrants, mostly farmers and socialists, in order to counter the power of local merchants, the CCE soon became a very successful business and sought to compete with the powerful chain stores of the region. Drawing the portrait of this federation is a way to highlight three elements that have too often been neglected. Firstly, it emphasises the possibility for stakeholders to maintain an active and politicised role in the advent of the consumer society. Then, the CCE illustrates the important and specific role that rural territories played in the changing modes of consumption. Finally, the case of the CCE shows the persistence of the powerful links between the worlds of consumption and production, at the very core of the transitional process towards mass consumption.

Consumers, Co-operators and Socialists? L'Union de Lille (1892-1914)This article deals with politicisation through economic practices within the socialist consumer cooperative L'Union de Lille, at the turn of the 20th century. In addition to improving the way of living of Lille's working class, the cooperative's managers explicitly viewed consumption practices and democratic organisation within the cooperative as a way of strengthening a socialist project, and more specifically, strengthening Guesdism, then a very influential socialist current in Northern France. The practices and rules of the cooperative appeared to be an ideal way of teaching and shaping “socialist consumers”, to unite the working class, as well as to finance the socialist party's activities. However, this politicised translation of the cooperative project was ambiguous, as it led the co-operators to take on practices and attitudes such as savings, planning for the future, voting and delegation. The study of socialist cooperatives such as “l'Union de Lille” highlights the complex rationales of acculturation of the working class to the dominant forms of doing politics during the Third Republic.

Recruitment of Senior Executives in Swiss Companies, 1910-1980Until recently, the few studies to have focused on company executives in Switzerland in the 19th and 20th centuries have generally celebrated the figure of the “self-made man”, someone who started from nowhere and by the end of his life had moved up to the highest positions of power. This article – which looks at the social origins and education of more than 800 senior executives from the largest Swiss companies, over the period 1910-1980 – breaks with this hagiographic view. In line with research on the recruitment of senior executives in Western Europe and the United States, our research shows that social origin was the most decisive factor for success. However, two specific features emerge for Switzerland. Firstly, a few educational institutions were predominant, and all of these were public. Secondly, the army played an important role in the careers of Swiss executives. The army, as an entirely male place of sociability, contributed to women being excluded from the centres of economic power.

“Finishing Schools”. The Decline of International Boarding Schools for Girls in Switzerland (1950-1970)From the late 19th century, Swiss “finishing schools” were highly sought after by the bourgeoisie and aristocracy of Europe and America. These international boarding schools for girls were dedicated to teaching a form of elite femininity based on travel, learning foreign languages, and the creative arts. By analysing the archives of the Private Education Bureau of the Vaud Canton, this article shows that the local finishing school sector was still in flux in the 1950s in terms of its clientele, school structures and recognition by the authorities. In the 1960s, bourgeois families and school directors no longer necessarily shared the same standards and practices, whereas such shared values had previously helped ensure and perpetuate the existence of these schools. This article endeavours to understand the steady decline in the importance of finishing schools for girls' education over the period, in light of the transformations in the educational expectations of elite social circles.

The Barbarian Invasions, or the Criminal Tramway (Paris, 1872-1914)This article examines resistance to the building and expansion of tramway lines in Paris between 1872 and 1914. Vehicle traffic in certain places frequented by high society triggered lively campaigns in the right-wing press and many protests from conservative elected officials, who viewed this as the death of Paris's wealthy and cosseted districts. The tramway was supposedly an instrument of this desire to destroy, hence its nickname ‘the tramway of the barbarians'. These episodes are interesting in that they sparked a very clear discourse by representatives of Paris's western districts of excluding poor and coarse people. For the native-born or moneyed elite, tramway rails disrupting harmonious districts were regarded as an attack on their sociability and on their territory.