History Commons^™

Grassroots Consumption: Ontario Farm Families’ Consumption Practices, 1900-45, Andrea M. Gal

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Popular culture and academic perceptions typically view farmers of the past in one of two ways. On the one hand, we tend to emphasize their roles as producers of agricultural commodities, and marginalize or underemphasize their roles as consumers. On the other, we might believe that farmers were simply the passive recipients of broader societal trends and developments, and think that they followed in the footsteps of their urban counterparts. A small but growing number of scholars are engaging with these views, as they examine the consumption practices of rural North America. This historiography, however, is largely centered in the …