HAL Id: tel-02881966 https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-02881966 Submitted on

HAL Id: tel-02881966 https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-02881966 Submitted on 26 Jun 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- entific research documents, whether they are pub- lished or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Finding a New Home (Economics) : Towards a Science of the Rational Family, 1924-1981 Agnès Le Tollec To cite this version: Agnès Le Tollec. Finding a New Home (Economics) : Towards a Science of the Rational Family, 1924-1981. Economies et finances. Université Paris-Saclay, 2020. Français. ￿NNT : 2020UPASN006￿. ￿tel-02881966￿ i Acknowledgements (in French) Je souhaite remercier en premier lieu mon directeur de thèse, Philippe Fontaine, pour ses nombreuses relectures et commentaires depuis le commencement de ce travail. Il a largement contribué à améliorer la qualité du rendu final. Merci pour sa rigueur intellectuelle, sa disponibilité et son soutien constant. Je remercie grandement Virginie Albe, Evelyn Forget, Alain Marciano, Steven Medema et Christine Théré d’avoir accepté de faire partie de mon jury de thèse et de l’intérêt qu’ils ont porté à mon travail. Merci en particulier à Virginie Albe de m’avoir suivie pendant les différents comités de thèse. Mes recherches m’ont amené à rencontrer un certain nombre de chercheurs qui ont enrichi mon travail. Je tiens à témoigner toute ma reconnaissance à Andrea Beller, Cléo Chassonnery-Zaïgouche, Béatrice Cherrier, Maxime Desmarais- Tremblay, Jean-Baptiste Fleury, Thibault Le Texier, Harro Maas et Ioana Popa pour avoir lu certains de mes chapitres et m’avoir fait part de leurs commentaires, qui m’ont permis d’améliorer ces textes. Un grand merci Loïc Charles et Yann Giraud pour leurs nombreux conseils lors de leurs venues à Cachan et notamment lors de mes comités de thèse. Je suis très reconnaissante envers l’History of Economics Society et l’Associazione Italiana per la Storia dell’Economia Politica de m’avoir permis d’échanger sur mes recherches et de profiter des bons côtés de la vie académique lors de leurs conférences annuelles. J’en profite pour saluer mes collègues Young Scholars. ii La consultation de fonds d’archives a contribué à enrichir cette thèse. Pour l’aide que j’ai reçue, je tiens à remercier les équipes de la Joseph Regenstein Library à l’Université de Chicago ainsi que de l’Iowa State University Library. Cette thèse n’aurait évidemment pas été possible sans le soutien de l’École normale supérieure de Paris-Saclay et de l’Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne qui m’ont permis, grâce respectivement à un contrat doctoral et deux contrats d’ATER, de me consacrer sereinement à son élaboration. Un grand merci à mes collègues et amis cachanais, en particulier à Serge Benest et à Antoine Hémon, pour les nombreuses discussions qui ont permis de rendre ces années de travail beaucoup plus agréables. Au terme de ce parcours, je remercie enfin celles et ceux qui me sont chers, tout particulièrement ma mère Odile, mon père Stéphane, mon frère Arnaud et toute ma famille. Leur présence et leur soutien tout au long de ces années sont inestimables. Je remercie également Monique et Jean-François de m’avoir si bien accueillie à Paris aussi souvent que je le souhaitais. Merci à Sébastien sans qui ce travail n’aurait pu ni commencer, ni aboutir. Partager son quotidien est la meilleure chose qui me soit arrivée. Enfin, j’ai une pensée toute particulière pour mon grand-père, Roland Denaes, qui n’est pas étranger à mon goût pour l’histoire, la cuisine et le jardinage. iii Table of Content Acknowledgements (in French) ............................................................................................... i Table of Content ................................................................................................................... iii Illustrations ............................................................................................................................ 5 Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 6 A History of Family Economics ...................................................................................................... 6 Scope of the Dissertation .............................................................................................................. 9 A Literature Review ..................................................................................................................... 11 Argument .................................................................................................................................... 13 Plan of the Dissertation ............................................................................................................... 13 Sources ........................................................................................................................................ 16 Chapter 1 The Uncertain Place of Family in Economics, 1912–1930 .................................... 18 I- Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 18 II- The Invisibility of Women’s Work ....................................................................................... 19 III- Consumption as a “Backward” Female Activity .................................................................. 24 IV- Women Economists: from Economics to Home Economics ................................................. 32 V- Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 36 Chapter 2 Finding a Home for Family Economics, 1924–1935.............................................. 38 I- Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 38 II- Home Economics: Going Back to the Original Meaning of Economics? ............................... 39 III- Family Economics at the University of Chicago ................................................................... 42 IV- Family Economics at Iowa State College ............................................................................. 49 V- Family Economics at Cornell University ............................................................................. 54 VI- Family Economics in Federal Government .......................................................................... 56 VII- Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 60 Chapter 3 Home Economics as Art: Creating Rational Consumers, 1924–1945 ................... 61 I- Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 61 II- The New Art of Rational Consumption ............................................................................... 63 III- The ‘Rational Consumer’ Turn in American Society ............................................................ 71 IV- The ‘Rational Consumer’ Turn in Academia ........................................................................ 80 V- Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 86 Chapter 4 Home Economics as Art: Building a Consumer-Oriented Society, 1924–1945...... 88 I- Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 88 iv II- Mobilizing Women Consumers for “Real” Freedom of Choice ............................................ 89 III- Mobilizing Women Consumers For Family and Social Welfare ........................................... 98 IV- Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 104 Chapter 5 The Lost Art of Consumption, 1943–1965 .......................................................... 107 I- Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 107 II- Sustaining the Art of Consumption ................................................................................... 109 III- An Adverse Institutional Context ...................................................................................... 113 IV- New Mainstream Theories of Consumption ..................................................................... 122 V- Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 131 Chapter 6 The New Home Economics and the Rational Family, 1960–1981 ...................... 133 I- Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 133 II- Building the Economic Approach to the Family at Columbia University, the National Bureau of Economic Research and the University of Chicago ................................................................ 135 III- The Reception of the NHE Among Economists and Other Social Scientists ....................... 149 IV- Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 160 Conclusion.......................................................................................................................... 162 A New History of Family Economics .......................................................................................... 162 Rationality Transformed ........................................................................................................... 167 Family Economics after the New Home Economics ................................................................... 168 Annex ................................................................................................................................. 170 Bibliography ...................................................................................................................... 173 Archival Collections ................................................................................................................... 173 References ................................................................................................................................ 173 Index .................................................................................................................................. 201 5 Illustrations Figure 1: Sections of the Chicago home economics department in relation to existing disciplines ............................................................................................ 46 Figure 2: U. S. Marriage and Divorce Rate per 1,000 Population .................... 145 Table 1: Early Family Economists Associated With Home Economics ............. 170 6 Introduction In the past few years, increased attention has been paid to the global ecological crisis. Modern societies are threatened by the depletion of natural resources, pollution, demographic explosion and climate change. An increasing number of people realize that the Western way of life, which is based on economic growth and unrestrained consumption, is unsustainable. In view of this, a renewed interest in the economic roles of the family has emerged. Consumption and household production are increasingly envisioned as means to satisfy basic human needs with a reduced environmental footprint. Thus, advice for home- made cooking, home-gardening as well as for healthy, economical and ecological purchases have proliferated.1 Family behavior has often been made the source of problems and the instrument of their solution so it is little surprising that the family as an economic unit would once again attract the attention of political actors. Social scientists have long been aware of the special status of the family in American society and they have been mindful of the political ramifications of their views. Economists are no exceptions and the vicissitudes of home economics throughout the twentieth century are testimony to the complex relationship between economics and politics when it comes to family. A History of Family Economics This dissertation traces the history of family economics in the United States from the time it was a subfield of home economics in the 1920s to the early 1980s 1 A recent example is the book We Are Weather, Saving the Planet at Breakfast by Jonathan Safran Foer (2019). 7 when it was clear that it was part of economics itself. In the early twentieth century, home economics was a well-established field of research and teaching which focused on the home and family. It was the most important educational field for American women during the first part of the century, from primary to higher education (Rossiter, 1995).2 In colleges and universities, home economics included studies on foods and nutrition, home sanitation (bacteriology, hygiene), textile and household management. It drew mostly on the natural sciences but from the 1920s onwards, it got closer to the social sciences. A new subfield emerged – variously called “family economics,” “consumption economics,” “economics of the home” or “household economics” – that drew on the social sciences and focused on the economic activities of families. Particular emphasis was given to consumer behavior, domestic work, housewives’ allocation of time and the relationships between families, corporations and government. Following World War II, there was a renewed interest in family economic activities among economists. A wide range of new economic theories of consumption emerged, including Paul Samuelson’s revealed preferences approach (1948), James Duesenberry’s relative income hypothesis (1949) and Milton Friedman’s permanent income hypothesis (1957). In the 1960s, family economics became a proper field of economics with the uploads/Science et Technologie/ le-tollec-2020-archivage.pdf

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