More Work for Housewife

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Industrializing the Household: Ruth Schwartz Cowan's "More Work for Mother"More Work for Mother by Ruth Schwartz CowanReview by: Joy ParrTechnology and Culture, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Jul., 2005), pp. 604-612Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Pressand the Society for the History of TechnologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40060907.

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Industrializinghe HouseholdRuth Schwartz Cowan's More Work for Mother

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JOY PARR

Ruth SchwartzCowan'sMore Workor Mother:The Ironiesof HouseholdTechnologyrom theOpenHearthto the Microwavewas and remainsa rareand welcomehybrid,valuedbyboth academicand nonacademicreaders. twas awardedSHOT'sDexterPrize for its high level of scholarshipn 1984,the year after its publication,and might equally had the Sally HackerPrize been in placeat the time have been honored for its reachtoward abroad audience of students and the generalpublic. It is a rarereviewer,fromthe grumpiestscholarto the most avidyoung blogger,who does notremarkon the paceand elegant vitalityof Cowan'sprose,or acknowledgepersonalepiphaniesarising rom both the historicalandpersonal nstancesshe so compellinglynarrates.For myself,I watched sidewalkprocessionsand my own mirrored reflection differentlyfor days after rereading,atmore than a decade'sremove,her pagesabout the class and genderprivi-legethatbody-hugginggarmentsonce bespoke.Cowan's cholarly inding,that duringthe last three centuriestechno-logical changeshifted the burden of domestic labor from adult men andchildrento mothers andwives,has been distilled just as Cowanas femi-nistpopular ntervenern the early1980shoped into a cautionary ale onwhich to ground a different household ethic. MoreWorkor Motherwasexcerptedin Reader'sDigestand providedthe hook for an article in theNationalInquirer}It was featured n guidesto greatbooks by women andJoy Parr is Canada Research Chair in Technology, Culture, and Risk in the Faculty ofInformation and Media Studies, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario. Hercurrent research project, "Sensing Changes: Bodies, Technologies, Livelihoods, Land-scapes,"considers how the presence of large-scale technologies and new technologicalknowledge systems (hydroelectric dams, shipping canals, nuclear generating stations,heavy-waterplants, military training and testingbases, water-quality regulatoryregimes)revealand alter the historically specific bodies of local inhabitants. She thanks Aki Beamof the University of Western Ontario for bibliographical assistance.2005 by the Society for the History of Technology.All rights reserved.0040-165X/05/4603-0007$8.00

1. Ruth SchwartzCowan,"This Is the History People Often Careabout Most," nter-

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PARRI Ruth Schwartz Cowan's More Work for Motherin NationalPublic Radiocommentaries;one Internetreviewerarguesthatthe book should be "assigned eading or every women'sstudies course fora bit of realitymixed in with the theory"and "includedin every bride'sweddingshower"o dim theglimmerof suchstarry-eyedmoments.2Muse-um curatorshave used Cowan's hemeas the organizingprinciplefor exhi-bitions of domestictechnologies,andyoung scholarscite Cowan'shomilyas a corrective o the domesticperfectionismof MarthaStewart.3Initially, he scholarlyreceptionof MWFMwas more critical. Cowanwas trainedas a historian of science in the decade before the insightsofsocial constructionopenedup the black box.4Byher own recollection,she"knewalmost no economics"when she startedthe projectand proceededrather rom the understanding, ased on personalexperience, hatproduc-tion andconsumptionwerebotheconomicactivities,andprobablyess cat-egoricallydistinguishablehan the Americanpublicthen recognized.5Althoughshe introducedthe terms "workprocess"and"technologicalsystem" early in the text, she employed them as "organizingconcepts"{MWFM,11)rather hanastheproteandeeplytheorizedtools forthinkingthat feminist and Marxistscholarshiphad made them by the early1980s.One particularly estyreviewer ound hergraspof theory "shaky."6 lead-

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view by Robert C. Post, American Heritage of Invention and Technology19 (summer2003): 59-62.2. Erica Bauermeister et al., Five Hundred Great Booksby Women(New York,1994);Irene Stuber,"Women Used to Help in the Fields and Men Used to Help in the House,"Women of Achievement and Herstory, http://www.undelete.org/woa/woa08-16.html,accessed June2005.3. Elizabeth M'Ule, "Women's Work Still Never Done," Portland Oregonian, 1November 1989,review of an exhibition at the Washington County Museum;JaniceGas-ton, "Still Chasing that Dust," Winston-Salem Journal 21 June 1999, review of theMuseum of the New South in Charlotte; and Carolyn C. Cooper, "The Ghost in theKitchen:Household Technology at the BrattleboroMuseum, Vermont,"TechnologyandCulture 28 (1987): 328-32. The domestic technology hall that opened in the mid-1990sat the Canadian Museum of Science and Technology, Ottawa, is also organized withinCowan's narrative frame.4. Eugene S. Ferguson, "Toward a Discipline of the History of Technology,"Tech-nologyand Culture 15 (1974): 13-30; R. D. Whitely,"Black Boxism and the Sociology ofScience:A Discussion of Major Developments in the Field," n The Sociology of Science,ed. Paul Halmos (Keele, U.K., 1972), 62-92. In the years immediately after the publica-tion of MWFM, Cowan was a central participant in this reconstruction of the field. SeeRuth SchwartzCowan, "The Consumption Junction:A Proposal for ResearchStrategiesin the Sociology of Technology,"n The SocialConstructionof Technological ystems:NewDirections in the Sociology and History of Technology,ed. Wiebe E. Bijker,Thomas P.Hughes, and TrevorJ.Pinch (Cambridge, Mass., 1987).5. Ruth Schwartz Cowan, "Is Women's Liberation a Myth?"interview by RebeccaCoulter,AuroraOnline, July2001, http://aurora.icaap.org/archive/cowan.html,accessedJune2005.6. Reviewby JosephF.Coates, Technological orecasting nd SocialChange28 ( 1985):371-72.

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ing student of domestic materialculture,KathrynGroverof the StrongMuseum n Rochester,NewYork, oncludedthatMWFMdid "notallow thereader o appreciatehe richnessand complexityof the social and culturalenvironment in which technologyemerges."7LouiseTilly,whose Women,Work ndFamily 1978),written with JoanW.Scott,hadby 1984 become afoundational text for theoretically nformedscholarship n the social his-tory of Europeanwomen's industrialand domestic labor,praisedCowan'scontribution as "interesting" alwaysa worrying sign) as well as "brisklywritten andtightly argued."But she also averred hat"surelymorecomplexprocesses lay behind the shift from subsistence or marketagriculture owagelabor than the developmentof iron casting"and faultedCowan for atechnologicaldeterminismthat failed to examine the influences of "struc-turalchange,household decisions and commercialresponse."n a spiritedresponse,Cowan conceded that in order to position technologyas a moreforcefulexplanatorin women's history she had overstated her case, andqueriedin rebuttalwhy social scientistsgenerallywere so loath to admittechnology"asa determining(andalsodetermined)variable."8Afterresearchingwhat becameMWFM or thirteenyearswithin the lit-eratures ndpractices f thehistoryof scienceandtechnology whichin theUnited States hen were moreisolatedfrom the maincurrentsof social andcultural heorythantheyhave sincebecome Cowanhad stumbled argelyunawaresonto an edifice built in fractiousdebateamongsocialist,Marxist,and material eminists.Bythe early1980s hisexplanatoryramewas threat-ening momentarily o crackunder the weightof its own contradictions, sstudentsof women'swork,with deeployalties o both capitalismandpatri-archyasexplanators,truggled o reconcile he orneryanddivergentpriori-ties and to accommodate the absences in these contending theoreticalframeworks. cholarsunder threatoftenstray rom the pathsof good graceand civility.Cowanrecallsonly one of these (darewe call them?)decon-structionsof MWFM,whichin retrospectsperhaps ustas well.9Plaudits ortheproseand the artfulphoto essaysaside, he onslaughtwasthorough.

Cowan straightforwardlydismissedthe Marxianinterpretiveprojectthen consuming her feministcolleagues:"Capitalism nd patriarchy xist,buttheyare not the sole determinantsof our behavior"MWFM,147,150).But her alternative, s her criticsinvariablynoted,held its own contradic-tions. To assertthat,given choices,"most Americansact so as to preserve7. Review by KathrynGrover,ChicagoHistory 15 (spring 1986): 70-71. On Grover'sthemes, see also an earlier review by Gail Pool, "Machines Haven't Really LessenedWomen'sWork,New Book Says,"Christian ScienceMonitor,20 October 1983.8. Review by Louise Tilly,Journalof the History of the Behavioral Sciences22 (1986):

81-83, and the accompanying response by Cowan, 84.9. Conversation between the author and Ruth SchwartzCowan at the meeting of theCanadian Society for the History of Medicine, London, Ontario, 4 June 2005. NonaGlazer,"More Work for Historians,"Women'sReviewofBooks1 (December 1983): 12-15.

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PARRI Ruth Schwartz Cowan's More Work for Motherfamilylife and family autonomy"and"optfor privacyand autonomyovertechnicalefficiencyand communityinterest"made tastes and preferenceskey and then, followingthe assumptionsof neoclassicaleconomics, setthem aside as exogenous,taken to be constants rather than forceful ele-ments within a dynamic analysis. Equally,Cowan strayedfrom her owncommitment to personalchoice between marketoptions offeredin a per-fectlycompetitive economy to explainthe failureof alternative echnolo-gies,notablyin her wonderfulparableabout the failureon the U.S. marketof absorptionrefrigeration,whichhingedon the abilityof oligopolistmar-ketpowerto constrainconsumer decisions.10Feministswerefocusedon the search o comprehendrace,class,and sex-ual orientationas differences.NotwithstandingCowan'sunevenattempts nlaterchaptersto addressthe separatecircumstancesof "the 'rich* nd the'poor'" MWFM,153;SallyHackern thisjournalwent so faras to call them"redundant"), er technological teleologiesamounted to the dismissal of"classand ethnicity as producersof inequality."This was, one Canadianreviewerconcluded,because"she is committed to the premisethat Amer-icancapitalismreallydoes represent he best chancesocietyhas to producethe maximum amount possible for freedom of choice and well-being."11Most reviewers,while pleasuring n the form of the book, found Cowan'scentralargument,by its relianceon culturalpreferenceswhoseoriginsandalterationswere invoked rather than examined,"unconvincing."12 allyHackerremarkedon the contrast t made with "Cowan's arlierrighteousswipesat Marxistmasculinism."Yet Hackercaughtin Cowan'swork the intimation,if not the accom-plishment,of somethingnew: "thepowerfulintegrationof materialfromfamily history,genderstratificationand householdtechnologywithin thehistoryof technology"and an explorationof "changing tructuresof socialrelations and howwefeel about ourselves nd otherswithin theserelation-ships '13 nd DeborahGorham,the Canadianreviewercited above,foundCowan'spouring of "some needed cold wateron the strain of romanticfeminist socialism"an importantcorrective hat set experimental chemesto rationalize houseworkon the margins of daily domestic culture andpractice,wherethey properlybelonged.14

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10. Glazer, 13;review by JudithA. McGaw,Isis 75 (1984): 775-77; Michael S. Kim-mel, "Housework: Is Less More?"Nation, 4 February 1984, 138-39; Deborah Gorham,"Three Books on the History of Housework" Atlantis 10 (spring 1985): 142-43.11. Gorham, 144; review by Linda Kealey,Labour/LeTravail 17 (1986): 358-60; re-view by Faye Dudden, American Historical Review 90 (1985): 235; review by BeverlyGoss, Women'sStudies 10 (1983-84): 354-58; Aihwa Ong, "DisassemblingGender in theElectronicsAge,"Feminist Studies 13 (1987): 612; review by SallyHacker,Technology ndCulture 26 (1985): 291-92.12. Dudden, 235.13. Hacker,292.14. Hacker, 292; Gorham, 143.

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Two challenges followed from this fray, challenges that were beingplayedout duringthe mid-1980s aroundMWFMbut not there alone: howto break down the studyof the capitalistcontext of technologicalchangeinto an examination of diversecapitalisms(for Cowan'swork dependedupon unexaminedparticularitiesn the spatial,theological,and corporatestructuresof the Americanpolitical economy as these were honored andelaboratedduringthe decades after World WarII);and how to bringthedynamicculturalforces of tastes and preferences,and the representationswhichconveyedand remadethem,backin from their decided or inadver-tent exiledpositionsin neoclassical conomic,andmuchsocial,theory.Didthe later-twentieth-centuryncrease n American mother-workresultsig-nificantly romwives'duties as chauffeurs n a nation of dispersedpopula-tion andlimitedpublic transportationnfrastructure?15 ererisinghouse-keepingstandardsn the United States inked to the "marriage f corporatecapitaland advertising"and an ideology of Americancitizenshipwhichtaughtthat"cleanliness f home andpersoncontributes oward he growthof democracy"? f so, then a more generalizablehistoryof the productionand use of domestictechnologywould requireboth more attentiveanaly-ses of capitalist ormations and more direct interrogationof the informa-tion systemsthat gave collectivityand privacydifferentcontextualsignifi-cancein householders'appraisals f new technologies.16It is thus unsurprising hatEuropeanreviewers,whilepraisingMWFMas "anauthenticgemasfaras the styleand articulationof argumentss con-cerned," s "a feat of scholarship,"nd as a "well-digested"modern rarity,were impatient with the short shrift that Cowan gave to working-classhouseholdtechnologies, o the systematicoperationsof the gendereddivi-sion of work,to the "influenceof ethnic traditionsof the qualitativedefini-tion of standardsof civilityand conviviality,"nd to the diverse relation-ships between housework and child rearingwhich led women to define"houseworkas an achievementrather han a chore."17 or is it surprising,

15. Review by JaneLewis, Women,Workand Society:Journalof the BritishSociologi-cal Association 4 (June 1990): 308; R. Law,"Beyond 'Women and Transport':TowardsNew Geographies of Gender and Daily Mobility," Progress in Human Geography23(1999): 567-88; C. Sanger,"Girlsand the Getaway:Cars,Culture and the PredicamentofGendered Space," University of Pennsylvania Law Review 144 (1995): 705-56; AdamRome, "Building the Land: Toward an Environmental History of Residential Develop-ment in American Cities and Suburbs, 1870-1990? Journalof UrbanHistory 20 (1994):407-34; R. Miller, "Selling Mrs. Consumer: Advertising and the Creation of SuburbanSociospatial Relations, 1910-1930,"Antipode23 (July 1991): 263-301.16. Kimmel (n. 10 above), 138;Rose LaubCoser,"Womenin American Society,"Dis-sent 31 (1984):499-500; review by GuyAlchon, BusinessHistoryReview 62 (1988): 171-72; review by Mary-Lou Schultz, WisconsinMagazineof History69 (1985-86): 151.17. Reviews by Remi Clignet (of Agence de cooperation culturelle et technique),AmericanJournalof Sociology91 (1985-86): 215-17; JamesWoudhuysen, Design (U.K.),no. 432 (1984): 13;Lewis (of the London School of Economics); Alun Davies (of Queen'sUniversity Belfast),EconomicHistoryReview 39 (1986): 320-21.608



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PARRI Ruth Schwartz Cowan's More Work for Mothergiven the quality of her mind and her historical practice, that Cowanturned her attention immediately to a more complex and theoreticallyinformedanalysisof "theconsumption unction"that underlay he opera-tions she had firstsurveyed n MWFM.Duringthe first wodecadesafter tspublication,Cowan'sbookwas citedin 319scholarlyarticles eighteenof these,appropriately,n TechnologyndCulture,ncludingone special ssue on genderand technologyand anotheron kitchens.18MWFMhas stimulated cholars o explorespecificsettings nthe UnitedStates,19nfluencedstudies of domestic work in diversenationalsettings20nd of a wide rangeof new technologies,21nd been a significantreferencepoint in theorizationsof genderandtechnology22ndkeycontri-butions to economichistory.23ome of this workdirectlyengagesthe calls

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18. Technology nd Culture 38 (January1997) and 43 (October 2002).19. K.C. Barton,'"Good Cooks and Washers':SlaveHiring, Domestic Labor,and theMarket in Bourbon County, Kentucky,"Journal of American History 84 (September1997): 436-60; Ronald R. Kline and Trevor Pinch, "Users as Agents of TechnologicalChange: The Social Construction of the Automobile in the Rural United States,"Tech-nologyand Culture 37 (1996): 763-95; Wendy Gamber,"'Reduced to Science': Gender,Technology,and Powerin the American DressmakingTrade, 1860-1910," Technology ndCulture 36 (1995): 455-82; Deborah Fitzgerald,"FarmersDeskilled: Hybrid Corn andFarmers'Work,"Technologyand Culture 34 (1993): 324-43; K. Ray,"Meals,Migrationand Modernity: Domestic Cooking and BengaliEthnicity in the United States,"AmerasiaJournal24 (1998): 105-27.20. J. Lloyd and L. Johnson, "Dream Stuff: The Postwar Home and the AustralianHousewife, 1940-60,"Environmentand Planning D: Societyand Space22, no. 2 (2004):251-72; H. Meintjes, "'WashingMachines Make LazyWomen': Domestic Appliancesandthe Negotiations of Women's Propriety in Soweto,"Journalof Material Culture 6 (No-vember 2001): 345-63; M. S. Haugen and B. Brandth,"Gender Differences in ModernAgriculture:The Case of Female Farmersin Norway,"Genderand Society8 (June 1994):206-29; G. N. Ramu, "Indian Husbands: Their Role Perceptions and Performance inSingle-Earnerand Dual-Earner Families," ournalof Marriageand the Family49 (1987):903-15.21. JonathanCoopersmith, "Pornography,Videotape and the Internet," EEETech-nologyand SocietyMagazine 19 (spring 2000): 27-34; David Morley,"Wherethe GlobalMeets the Local: Notes from the Sitting Room and the Place of EthnographicStudies ofMedia Consumption in Contemporary CulturalStudies,"Screen32 (spring 1991): 1-15;A. Venkateshand N. P.Vitalari,"Computing Technologyfor the Home: Product Strategiesfor the Next Generation," ournalofProductInnovationManagement3 (September 1986):171-86; KeirKeightly,"LowTelevision,High Fidelity:Taste and Gendering of HouseholdTechnologies," ournalof Broadcastand ElectronicMedia 47 (June 2003): 236-59.22. Cynthia Cockburn, "Domestic Technologies: Cinderella and the Engineers,"Womens Studies International Forum 20 (May-June 1997): 361-71; K. Grint and S.Woolgar,"On Some Failures of Nerve in Constructivist and Feminist Analyses of Tech-nology," Science, Technologyand Human Values 20 (1995): 286-310; L. L. Cornell,"Constructinga Theory of the Family:From Malinowski through the Modern NuclearFamilyto Production and Reproduction," nternationalJournalof ComparativeSociology31 (1990): 67-78; J. M. Wise, "Intelligent Agency,"CulturalStudies 12 (1998): 410-28;Nancy Folbre, "The Unproductive Housewife: Her Evolution in Nineteenth-CenturyEconomic Thought," Signs 16 (1991): 463-84.23. JanDe Vries,"TheIndustrial Revolution and the Industrious Revolution," ournal

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for elaboration hat were central to reviews of Cowan'sbook in the mid-1980s.ArwenMohun'sSteamLaundries aintsa complexandnuancedpor-trait of both the culturaland technologicalreasonswhywives and motherspreferredhome washingmachines to steam laundries.24 riscillaBrewer'sFromFireplaceo Cookstove,hrougha carefulreconstruction f the costs ofstoves and fuel over a periodof threecenturies, hows how class differenceinformed decisions to buy and use stoves and also how these choices wereinfluencedby the changingsymbolicvalences of tradition,propriety,andautonomy variouslyassociatedwith efficient closed boxes and welcomingopen hearths.25By singularcontrast,JoelMokyr's"Why More Work forMother'?Knowledgeand HouseholdBehavior,1870-1945"endorsesCow-an's much malignedneoclassicalperspective, enaming he "ironies"n hersubtitle"the Cowan Paradox."26hroughwhat he describesas"arelativelyminorextensionof standard onsumer heory,"most notablyGaryBecker's1981 bookA Treatise n theFamily,Mokyrpositsa rationalityorthe inten-sification of houseworkand increased attention to domestic hygiene asmeans to limit the transmissionof infectiousdiseases.More significant n the long run may be Cowan'sparticipation n theformativeprojectof bringingthe social and culturalback into the historyof technology by her contribution to the 1987 collection The Social Con-structionof Technologicalystems.27n her contribution to that path-mak-ing volume,"TheConsumptionJunction:A Proposalfor ResearchStrate-gies in the Sociology of Technology,"Cowan compellinglyaddressedandaccommodatedmanycritiquesof MWFM.Heressayassureda centralplacefor gender,consumption,and householdsin this radical rearticulationoftechnologystudies,as her fellow contributorMichel Callonacknowledgedin his discussion of actor-network heory.28Takingup Hacker's mphasison the interpretiveopening thatMWFMallowed,Cowanoffered a framewith which to explore"theplaceand the time at which the consumermakeschoices betweencompetingtechnologies," mphasizing"howthe networkmayhave looked when viewed from the insideout"("TCJ,"63). This newformulationmade room for a moreheterogeneous"prospective urchaser"of EconomicHistory54 (June 1994): 249-70; S. Bowden and A. Offer,"Household Appli-ances and the Use of Time: The United States and Britain since the 1920s,"EconomicHis-toryReview47 (1994): 725-48; Robert L. Frost,"Machine Liberation:Inventing House-wives and Home Appliances in Interwar France,"French Historical Studies 18 (spring1993): 109-30.24. Arwen Mohun, Steam Laundries:Gender,Technology,and Work in the UnitedStatesand GreatBritain, 1880-1940 (Baltimore, 1999).25. Priscilla Brewer,FromFireplaceto Cookstove:Technologyand the Domestic Idealin America (Syracuse,N.Y.,2000).

26. Journalof EconomicHistory60 (2000): 1-40.27. Bijker,Hughes, and Pinch (n. 4 above).28. Callon, "Society in the Making:The Study of Technology as a Tool for Sociolog-ical Analysis" in Bijker,Hughes, and Pinch, 93, 99, 101.

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PARRI Ruth Schwartz Cowan's More Work for Motherdistinguishable by "appropriatesocioeconomic variables (for example'middle class'and 'rural')" "TCJ," 63-64), and could comprehendde-mand influencesexertedby governments, uch as the directorof the Ord-nanceDepartmentof the United StatesArmy,as well as "a homeownerinneedof a new basementfurnace""TCJ,"63,274). But two characteristicsof the neoclassical heorythat hadorganizedMWFM ingered:heassump-tions thatpurchasingdecisions would takeplacewithinthe relationsof themarket,whethercompetitiveor oligopolistic,and that thesechoices wouldbe betweenlikegoods andcommodities,whethertheybe stoves or satellitesurveillanceystems,designedto achievesimilar echnicalpurposes("TCJ,"276,279). Onlyone of Cowan'snetworksketches,herfigure6 on page277,includes "governmentaldomain,"to cover the exceptions in the UnitedStatesof WorldWarIIand publichousing.For the long twentiethcentury,and especially or the cold war period,these legaciesfrom MWFMlimit the applicabilityof "TheConsumptionJunction"eyondthepoliticaleconomyof theUnitedStates.Since he 1920s,in manyNorth Atlanticsocial and liberaldemocracies,nonmarketresolu-tions for the distributionof income and theprovisionof goods and serviceshad beenmovingfrom the romanticmargins o becomecommonsenseandcommonplace.As several ecentcontributionso thisjournalhaveshown,forthe particularpostwarinstances of the Netherlands,EastGermany,andCanada and, as Ruth Oldenziel,Adri de la Bruheze,and Onno de Witargue, orEuropegenerally a morebroadly pecified"mediationunction"is necessaryor theinitiativeCowanbegan nMWFMandextended n"TCJ"to offer convincingexplanations or the relationshipsbetweentechnologyandconsumptionbeyondtheUnitedStates.29 orthe UnitedStates,LizabethCohen'sbook A Consumers' epublic nalyzesAmericanprivilegingof pri-vacywithinhistorically pecific deologiesof citizenship,and in PocketbookPoliticsMeg Jacobsstudies the form and receptionof rationingfor bothdomestic and capitalgoods duringWorldWarII,both interventionswhichmake astesandpreferencesubjects orstudyrather han theahistorical on-stants hey,despite helinguisticand cultural urn,too longhaveremained.30

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29. Wiebe E. Bijkerand Karin Bijsterveld,"Women Walking through Plans: Tech-nology, Democracy, and Gender Identity,"Technologyand Culture 40 (2000): 485-515;Karin Zachmann, "ASocialist Consumption Junction: Debating the Mechanization ofHousework in EastGermany, 1956-1957," Technology nd Culture43 (2002): 73-99; JoyParr,"What MakesWashdayLess Blue?Gender, Nation, and Technology Choice in Post-war Canada,"Technologyand Culture 38 (1997): 153-86; and, more generally, Parr,DomesticGoods:TheMaterial, theMoral,and the Economic n thePostwar Years Toronto,1999). The reference to "for Europe generally"is to Ruth Oldenziel, Adri Albert de laBruheze, and Onno de Wit, "Europe'sMediation Junction:Technology and ConsumerSociety in the Twentieth Century,"Historyand Technology 1 (March 2005): 107-39.30. Cohen, A Consumers'Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in PostwarAmerica(New York,2003); Jacobs,PocketbookPolitics:EconomicCitizenship n Twentieth-CenturyAmerica (Princeton, N.J., 2005).

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But forpoliticaleconomiesbeyondthe UnitedStates,he mediation unctionmust decenter"thedominanceof corporate ontrol" nd consider hebeliefsandpractices f mass,collective, ndbourgeoisconsumption n the stateandcivilsocietyas well as the market.Twentyyearson,MWFM s morefrequentlyadoptedas a textin courseson the sociology of work than in courses on women'shistory,and it is re-gardedas an authoritative ource more by popularthanscholarlyreaders.Insofaras this is the case,one valuable egacyof the work is beinglost, forCowan is exceptionallyadeptat situatingher sources and drawingout themeanings that come from their provenanceas opposed to their explicitcontent. The text of MWFMis repletewith teachable moments in thosemundane and indispensableelements of the historian'scraft, reflexes ittakes years adequatelyto embody yet which when merely described inwords seem to many students too trivialto merit concentratedattention.These craft lessons are not as precedentas they need to be in the teachingtools of the historyof technology,wheretheoryand the sweepof the longuedureehavenudgedaside fastidiousnessabout the content of the form andthe qualificationsof the observing, istening,or hypothecating ecorder.Yetthe popularlegacyCowan intendedfor her work,a morale boost for thedistaff side in the battles over the division of domestic work, remains,which is no small contributionto the health of the AmericanRepublic.Forreadersbeyondthe UnitedStates,MWFMmakesbest sense when readcrit-ically,on one levelas a narrativeaboutchangingmother-workin the geo-graphical, eligious,andpoliticalspaceof one extraordinary ation,and onanotheras a cautionary aleaboutthe ideologicalprocessesbywhich all oursense-making s constrained.

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More Work for Housewife