Exploring the roots of Canadian consumer culture between the 1890s and the Second World War, Purchasing Power uncovers the meanings that Canadians have attached to consumer goods. Offering a new perspective on the temperance, conservation, home economics, feminist, and co-operative movements of this period, this book brings women’s consumer interests to the fore. Due to their exclusion from formal politics and most paid employment, many Canadian women leveraged their consumer roles into personal and social opportunities. In the consumer sphere, they sought solutions for their isolation, their desire for upward mobility and personal expression, and their families’ survival. Through their purchasing power, Canadian women transformed consumer culture into an arena of political engagement.

Donica Belisle's profile page

• Short-listed, City of Regina Book Award
• Winner, CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2021

"This is a wonderful book that delves deeply into issues of class, gender, and race, considering how these classifications alternatively empower and exclude."

<em>CHOICE</em>

"Drawing on rich archival research, Donica Belisle has written a fascinating consumer history of Canada, focusing on women’s contributions before the Second World War. This well-written study explores the links between citizenship and consumption, detailing the ways that white British practices were normalized as 'Canadian' and the role that women played in the formation of white Canadian nationalism in the early twentieth century."

Vicki Howard, Department of History, University of Essex

"This is a book about the rise of a Canadian consumer culture as viewed through the prism of women’s associations, publications and activities. This, it does well."

<em>Prairie History</em>

“Many white Canadian women between the 1890s and 1930s deployed notions of consumer taste to solidify their own privilege. This book helps us appreciate why consumption continues to compel so many women now, even in the face of mounting evidence of its destructiveness.”

Tracey Deutsch, Department of History and the Imagine Chair in Arts, Design, and Humanities, University of Minnesota

"La force du livre de Donica Belisle, dont l’écriture est par ailleurs limpide, est de restituer la complexité et les ambivalences qui ont ponctué le chemin vers la société de consommation industrielle. Cet ouvrage représente donc une contribution majeure à l’histoire de l’économie politique canadienne."

<em>Histoire sociale / Social History</em>

"Today, the term 'pro-sumer' denotes 'a consumer who becomes involved with designing or customizing products for their own needs.' This study of women considers the forms of political consumerism in which they engaged and reveals the political values they held."

<em>The Prairie Journal of Canadian Literature</em>