| Between 1920 and 1950, American food retailing was transformed. Small neighborhood stores gradually gave way to very large supermarkets. Grocers expected women shoppers to enjoy and adhere to store policies, rather than demand personal attention and assert themselves in pursuit of their family's food, as had been the case in the smaller stores of previous decades. At the same time, government officials also came to rely heavily on these new stores, as policymakers, pursued new, consumption-oriented laws and regulations. This dissertation asks why supermarkets achieved such popularity, arguing that their strategies were shaped by new laws and new gender relations, and not only by the need to please American shoppers through low prices. To make this argument, it studies the convergence in retail strategies of three kinds of retail firms---chain stores, independently owned smaller stores, and consumer cooperative societies. Using Chicago as a case study, the dissertation documents how the emergence of supermarkets marked a transformation in the ways that Americans bought and sold food, the ways that policymakers governed, and the places in which women claimed and exercised power. |
