Mobilizing Consumers: The American Consumer Movement in the 1960s-70s as a Social Movement

This dissertation investigates the American consumer movement in its heyday, the 1960s and 1970s, from the perspective of social movement research. What explains the vibrant civic activity and political mobilization of consumers from the mid-1960s and during the 1970s, and the rapid decline of the movement in the following decade? How did the consumer movement manage to attain public popularity and political efficacy, even if short-lived, given the challenges of mobilizing such an expansive group on the basis of the all-inclusive category that is “the consumers”? Drawing on historical research and archival documents, I argue that the answers are found in the political-economic paradigm that articulated consumers as a political constituency. More specifically, a policy regime of consumer protection, which was employed during the 1960s, brought about consumer mobilization that formed a national social movement. Thanks to this set of consumer protection and other social policies, consumer advocates were afforded with organizational and material resources that allowed them to mobilize nationally, and consumers, as a constituency, were provided with political significance as bearers of rights in the marketplace. The consumer movement mobilized, then, primarily from the top down, facilitated by policy effects that engendered the formation of a “consumer lobby” at the federal level, that is, national interest groups. They, in turn, helped to coordinate various state organizations and local civic activities and bring them together under the banner of the consumer movement, and encouraged further mobilization at the grassroots. While the articulation of consumers as a political constituency originated in formal policies, the consumer movement’s members engaged in processes that formed and fostered a political collective consumer identity. At the core of this collective identity was the movement’s version of “consumer politics” – an adversarial worldview dividing the world into consumers against businesses. It was professed by both interest groups advocating for consumer representation in the government to countervail the interests of businesses, and grassroots organizations engaging in actions that ranged from picketing and protesting businesses to driving consumers, through public education, to voice consumer complaints. As “consumerists,” movement members could themselves attain collectivity and a shared sense of commitment to the consumer cause. It was more difficult for them to impart it to the wider consumer constituency – among other things, since the rhetorical framing and tactical tools that they used to do so had emphasized consumers as individuals. Deteriorating economic conditions since the mid-1960s initially furthered the mobilization of consumers. However, as they exacerbated and turned into a series of severe crises in the 1970s, and in the face of reinvigorated business mobilization that affected public opinion and policymakers, the consumer movement encountered growing challenges. While its leadership got more involved in partisan (Democratic) politics in the late half of the 1970s, resulting in fissures within the movement, consumer protection policies seemed no longer economically viable. Consequently, the movement lost ground. This decline intensified under the Reagan administration’s economic policies. Without its political benefactors and having lost its wide public support, the consumer movement retracted into interest group politics