judy wajcman feminism confronts technology

Early radio technology tended to be home-made and difficult to use correctly, which made it more likely to be a hobby for males, at leas according to conventional wisdom.

Carlatt discusses what he considers the feminization of radio technology that allowed it to be marketed successfully as an appliance for the home and, eventually, something of an expression of style or design. This essay is helpful both to advertising historians and scholars studying the spread of radio into the American home in the inter-war period. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998. “A Cleanser for the Mind: Marketing Radio Receivers for the American Home, 1922-1932.” In His and Hers: Gender, Consumption, and Technology, Roger Horowitz and Arwen Mohun, eds. “Driving Ambitions: Charles Roswell Henry and the Changing Status of the Early Automobile Consumer.” Michigan Historical Review 37 (Fall 2011): 79–98.Ĭarlat, Louis. “We Have Got a Very Good Cooking Stove: Advertising, Design, and Consumer Response to the Cookstove, 1815-1880.” Winterthur Portfolio 25 (1990): 35-54.īuerglener, Robert. “The Woman at the Wheel: Marketing Ideal Womanhood, 1915-1934.” Journal of American Culture 20:3 (1997): 13-30.īrewer, Patricia J. He also chides 1950s-era critics of advertising, like Vance Packard and John Kenneth Galbraith, for overestimating the power of advertising for mischief in American society.īehling, Laura L. Baughman uses this to point out first that the power of advertising to shape consumer behavior is limited you cannot sell Americans something they ultimately do not want. As Baughman notes, it was “a Ford or Mercury in costume.” The ad campaign generated a lot in interest and the ads themselves were well regarded, but people did not buy the cars. The Esdel was only unique in its appearance. Even in the era of chrome and tail fins, consumers were attracted to more than image. According to Baughman, several factors explain the lack of response to the new model automobile and Cone’s inability to sell it.

This essay makes use of agency records and Cone’s personal papers to examine the failed campaign to market the Ford Edsel in the late 1950s.

Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997. Cone and the Edsel Advertising Campaign, 1957-59.” In The Other Fifties. “Television as Gendered Technology: Advertising the American Television Set.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 17:2 (1989): 46-56.īaughman, James L. “Promotion of New Technology Through Fun and Spectacle: Electricity at the World’s Columbian Exposition.” Journal of American Culture 18:2 (Summer 1995): 45-55.Īltman, Karen E.

Judy wajcman feminism confronts technology