What Does Home Economics Mean?

What does home economics mean? What does it mean to you? Is it practical, or philosophical, or both? What do you remember from your home economics classes (if you had them)? Did you take shop classes too? Did you learn to work with wood or metal? Maybe repair a car? Did you ever learn how to hem a pair of pants?

I'm curious. What has been your experience with home economics? Good or bad? Do you know that you practice the economy of your home each day? Or do you? When you are aware of your own economics, do you feel liberated or imprisoned?

What is home economics?

Books You Might Enjoy, Part 2

Well, it's that time to provide another list of good books on the topic of home economics, , and in this case the development of the "American consumer".

Berry, W. (1987). Home economics. San Francisco, CA: North Point Press.

Casey, J. G. (2009). A new heartland: Women, modernity, and the agrarian ideal in America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Pendergast, T. (2000). Creating the modern man: American magazines and consumer culture, 1900-1950.. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.

Scanlon, J. (1995). Inarticulate Longings: The Ladies' Home Journal, gender, and the promises of consumer culture. New York, NY: Routledge.

Spring, J. (2003). Educating the consumer-citizen: A history of the marriage of schools, advertising, and media..Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

Jacobson, L. (2004). Raising consumers: Children and the American mass market in the early twentieth century. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Pursell, C. (2007). The machine in America: A social history of technology. 2nd edition. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Scanlon, J. (Ed.) (2000). The gender and consumer culture reader. New York, NY: New York University Press.

Raggat, P., R. Edwards, and N. Small (1996). The learning society: Challenges and trends. New York, NY: Routledge.


Frank, D. (1994). Purchasing power: Consumer organizing, gender, and the Seattle labor movement. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Just 5 Easy Steps

Today, ToDay, TODAY! - learn home economics in just 5, easy to implement steps! Your neighbors are doing it, and so can you!

Really? Thanks anyway, Greg. Well, I'm poking fun at the eHow people and the five steps at this website: How To Learn Home Economics.
(Note to the right of "Instructions that the difficulty level is listed as "easy".)

At the beginning, eHow states, "Home economics is the study of economic and management in a domestic environment. This formal study includes consumer education, cleaning, sewing, cooking, child development and all other domestic related fields. In higher education, home economics is classified as family and consumer science, which includes women and men. Home economics has been thought of as a field of study primarily for women, but that has changed in recent years with higher enrollment rates for men. Luckily, home economics basics can easily be learned online or through taking a course at your local vocational school." Then the five steps follow.

Step 1 - Do some research. Find out what interests you about the field. You'll likely run across the things that have stereotyped the field and women, as well as avoiding any deeper philosophy connected with the economic practices of home and every other action occurring outside of the homes' walls or boundaries.

Step 2 - Take a home economics course at your local vocational school. Call them up and ask them if they have a basic introductory class. You'll already need to know something about your own home economic situation because this step suggests that you find a class that costs an amount that is comfortable to you to pay. Are you ready for a degree in home ec now? Simply go to Step 3.

Step 3 - "Go to the eCollege Finder website to look through a list of online accredited schools if you already have received your high school diploma." Okay, done. Now what?

Step 4 - "Choose what type of degree you want from the drop-down menu, then select your area of study from the second drop-down menu. Select "Liberal Arts" for a basic degree in home economics or select "Education" if you want to learn how to teach home economics. Type in your ZIP code and email address, then click on the "Search Now" button to continue." *coming to a screeching halt*... Ah, there it is, home economics used as commodity development. All a vendor needs, in this case eHow, is to know where you are generally located, and an email to send you important messages about your desire to be a home economist.

Step 5 - Provide the search system with your blood type, names of all your kin 3 generations out, your astrology sign, and a quote from the best fortune you ever got from a fortune cookie. Press submit and voila, you'll find the school for you with the program for your success in your newly found passion for the economy of home.

Okay, so this version of Step 5 is my interpretation of what is really listed on eHow, but how pertinent? There is no magical set of personal information that can provide you with the ideal school or program or interest in home economics or family and consumer sciences. One might not look at the successful completion of a home economics class as the determiner of pursuing a degree in the field. One would be better to look at the reasons that drove them to take the class in the first place. Where is your philosophy? What are you thinking about? What is the connection to home economics, family, and consumption that put you in front of your computer and compelled you to Google, perhaps, "what is home economics" or "home economics class"?

The search for what is important enough to us that we want to spend time, thinking, and money on it doesn't happen in the 0.26 seconds that it took Google to search for your key words. It is something that builds over time, even when you aren't paying attention. I suppose if someone wants to be a home economist, family and consumer scientist, or a writer for eHow, she or he needs to dig deep into their own thoughts, which, frankly, won't take five simple steps to do, nor will the results of how to pursue what you find happen in five simple steps either. There are no search boxes in your head. And no submit buttons.

[Disclaimer: - I'm sure eHow is a wonderfully helpful website. I just wish things so important to humanity and the planet weren't stated as if a Cliff Note or "home economics for Dummies" book made the study of economy that simple.]

School Farming - is the time finally now?

I am researching information in some early 20th century publications generally entitled, The Farmer's Wife. It is basically a magazine with stories, advertisements, helpful tips, discussions, etc., like any modern magazine. In the August 1912 issue, there is a paragraph called A New Measure of Farm Life. It says,

"From Wisconsin comes the prophecy that in the future every school will be surrounded by a small farm of from ten to fifteen acres, which will not only afford the pupils a chance of practice and education, but will enable the teacher to partly support himself on the land. Wisconsin, like a good many personal reformers, is living many years ahead of the times. This idea of school farming is not its only advance step. Wisconsin is one of the states that has passed laws whereby every school building shall be considered a Social Center for the community. Other states will find an excellent lesson to copy in this act of legislature."

This combination of growing food and social interaction is something that was lost in many places in America, for how long I don't really know. But today, the trend is moving toward this Wisconsin "prophecy". People are taking an interest in real food and finding ways to bring it to the schools and the kids. An elementary school in Loveland, Ohio has their Granny's Garden School, and all the kids get to work and in the garden, learn and practice the process of growing food, and enjoy the goods! Apparently they caught wind of the prophecy early, establishing the garden in April of 2002. Want to see what they are doing? Here's the link: Granny's Garden School.

Think about this. Ninety years after the publication that I hold in my hand was printed, a school farm was initiated in Loveland. What has kept this disconnection in place for so long? Schools are always social places for their communities, as called for in the Wisconsin law. Now I wonder about the impact of this social farming on the youth who get to participate and how their practice of home economics will be influenced. More home food gardens? What about their future of food budgeting and knowledge of nutrition? What will their kids be taught? Where else is this influence happening? What are other kids today missing at schools that only provide processed government frozen goods?

A New Shift Toward a "Female-driven Economy"? - Seriously?

Well, if you know anything about the history of consumer patterns, advertising, and its development, you already know - without consulting a big national study by a communications firm - that women are the major targets of consumer ads and products. I am not going to try posting all of the background information I have on this topic. It's very extensive, and so insanely obvious that the research findings at the first link below, shocked me with the title: "Women, Power, and Money: The Female-driven Economy". It seems to be a specialized publication for companies to they can consider how to "reach" women and get them to "drive" the economy.

I just can't keep from chuckling about this. Really? In 2008 you had to do a study about women as the main consumers? I suppose the good news is that the marketers don't have a clue, which in my opinion shows that women, the consumers, are economically intellectual in many ways that probably can't be known or revealed by research. That sounds like economic empowerment to me!

I need to say that since the beginning of industrialism in America, women's traditionally ascribed gender roles of producing the daily things of home were being siphoned off into industry - the weaving, spinning yarn, knitting, quilting, sewing, food storage, etc.. When women began to follow that alienating hose to the factories, they stopped a lot of their own production and found themselves uniquely tied to selling their labor for what they had once done independently (see Women At Work by Thomas Dublin, 1979). They started purchasing what they had once made.

It didn't take long for manufacturers to advertise their goods and services. Hell, even the undertakers used to call out in the streets for people to bring out the dead and put them in a cart! You have to sell a service - any service. I'm examining some early 20th century publications called The Farmer's Wife (TFW), and they, like most publications, are chock full of advertising for the things women once made. To be fair, there is a mix of production and consumption items in TFW. But one can't help but see just how "female-driven" the economy of home was for women in rural areas as well as urban.


Check out the research by Fleishman-Hilliard here: Kitchen Table Economics: The Power of the Female Consumer. Then click on the Women, Power, and Money link under the paragraph (next to the picture). This will take you to the PDF of the document.

Women in Economics Symposium

Here is a link to the morning session of the Women in Finance Symposium held by the US Department of the Treasury on March 29, 2010. You can find the link to the afternoon session at this link too. What is interesting to this blog and all of us in general is that the discussion at one point revolved around where and when do we learn about individual economic practices, and the women on the panel said "home". There was also the inclusion of family as the reason maybe for budgeting, and it was recognized how women are most often in charge of the household budget.

C-SPAN Women in Finance Symposium


I would also like to suggest that you watch the introduction by Timothy Geithner when he says that when women are put on boards of companies, those businesses do better than others financially. What is this transition of what women learn at home, and what they contribute in the workplace to financial activities, success, and accepted practices?

Agriculture and Home Economics

From The Farmer's Almanac e-newsletter, January 12, 2010: "In this winter season, we contemplate the words of this Almanac's founder, Robert B. Thomas . . .

“The cultivation of the earth ought ever to be esteemed as the most useful and necessary employment in life. The food and raiment by which all other orders of men are supported are derived from the earth. Agriculture is of consequence: the art which supports, supplies, and maintains all the rest.”
–Robert B. Thomas, 1796"

Yes, yes, indeed. Without food, humans can do nothing else. So why has such an important necessity gone from a simple need met by a flexible complex of social interactions and skillful practices, to a commercial process devoid of community and shared knowledge? Maybe part of the answer lies in the individualization of "home", however one might define it, individualized in the manner of ever more distinct residents; and homes disconnected from others in the surrounding area even though they may occur in cul-de-sac housing tracts. From front porch communities to backyard deck oases, most of us wouldn't know anymore how to cooperate on providing our common basic needs.

Imagine a home economics course with a lesson about the acquisition of food. Do you first think of a farmer harvesting the tomatoes you need? Or do you think of the piles of romas stacked in a grocery store display? Maybe you think of your backyard - tomatoes are one of the most popular food plants to grow at home (Top Ten Vegetables)! It's likely today, with the growth in desiring food from local producers/farmers that you think of a farmer's market. In any case, no matter how you buy your tomatoes, you will find a variable set of interpersonal relationships between people and tomatoes, as well as intrapersonal relationships with the skills to find or grow your own.

Maybe you can't grow a darn thing, and you imagine the grocery store tomatoes. That's okay. But can you imagine having a personal relationship with the people who put the tomatoes in your grocery store? Who harvested them? Were they paid fairly or was it done under a very common and current form of indebted slavery as happens all across - yes - the United States? When the tomato seeds were planted, did the farmer (or more often now known in corporate agribusiness today as "growers") think about how happy I would be with such a special food that he or she or they raised and cared for it like it was VITAL? Right now your thinking, ugh, why is my desire for a simple red tomato becoming so complex?

I like to ponder the question of whether or not people are vital. I also like to think that our social practices should reflect the vitalness of food. Simple. Simple food; simple sociality; made complex if only by our participation in the relationships of food and social practices. The earth can be cultivated in many an agricultural manner, but without cultivating the social part too, the most likely consequence is unstoppable toxic runoff.

"Make It Yourself"

I picked up a book by Sarah A. Gorden entitled, "Make It Yourself: Home Sewing, Gender, and Culture 1890-1930". I haven't read it yet, but it is only a portion of a multi-media discussion of home economics history. You can see the online portion here: Make It Yourself.

What needs to be stated about early home economics is that there is a deeper social philosophy that is very often overridden by conspicuous consumption. The divide in home economics education, and ultimately people's identity with this field of study, is as to whether home economics is practical, philosophical, social, and/or a study in consumerism.

The fact is that it was and is practical. The philosophy of - or love of thinking about - home economics is that you get knowledge about human activities related to our personal and private lives in a way that shows our diversity and ingenuity. This contributes to the social aspect of home economics in that once we understand our individual endeavors in living, that we can put into practice in a home, in a community, in the world, a more certain institution of justice about when we as humans decide to produce what we will then use to live, or to buy with the money produced from the selling of our labor. But what we decide to buy (rather than produce) with our labor-money is the product of someone else's labor, and that distant, unknowable labor is often unjust in the realm of global consumerism and capitalism.

Here's my bias: I like it when the salsa I make has onions, tomatoes, pepper, tomatillos, cilantro, and garlic that I myself harvested or was harvested by the farmers I can actually say hello to. My own work is in itself just. How can learning and education in home economics transfer such good-feeling justness to those outside of my home? I believe that it takes an active life, not one of pressure where I'm convincing people to make "justice salsa", but rather just practices that contribute to liberation.

"When Everything Changed" on C-SPAN

Here is a link to an interview with Gail Collins who recently published the book When Everything Changed. It's a history of American women from 1960 to the present. I conclude from the interview that this book may not address issues of women and home economics, which would deny a certain feminist critique. The interview was interesting, AND one of my Twitter responses to C-SPAN for this interview on the Washington Journal was asked of the author! Super - now I'm famous.

http://cspan.org/Watch/Media/2009/10/20/WJE/A/24493/Gail+Collins+Author+When+Everything+Changed.aspx

BTW, I had yet another Tweet read on C-SPAN this morning - I know, my signature keeps gaining tremendous value :) Rock on, Home Economics!!

U.S. corn supply to reach record: USDA - MarketWatch

One might not think that having a record supply of corn is related to the economy of home. In fact it is, and the key relationships are in forms and practices of production and consumption.

As for production, the constant increasing of corn bushel yields has been going on since the 1800s when the majority of the US economy was based in agricultural exports. It is still the largest part of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP). If you pay attention to a variety (preferably non-commercial) news sources, you will hear about the US food aid programs to other countries. Using food as a tool of international relations, as well as subtle neo-colonialism, has given the US governmental agencies and legislators the perceived power to profit from the practice of overproduction. Unfortunately, increasing yields through chemical and genetic manipulation has continually lessened the real incomes of corn farmers. I'll find the name, but it was a senator from a corn growing state, I think maybe it was James McClure from Idaho, that pushed for agricultural reform in the early 1970s. In this case, the reform was for more corn production, which, likely, benefited his constituents as there was a prediction of increasing grain prices in the 1970s. Duh. Of course he is going to push for corn.

What he did, in fact, was send some of his farmers to early retirement, or abandonment, and sadly all too often into foreclosure and bank repossession of land and equipment. The homes of the farmers - their own economy of home - was impacted directly from legislative acts. If anyone wants to talk about trickle-down economics, we could see a raging stream for farmers.

U.S. corn supply to reach record: USDA - MarketWatch

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Michael Pollan Article About American Cooking

Here is a link to a new Michael Pollan news article about American cooking (or the lack there of) and our relationships with our kitchens and cooking shows. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/magazine/02cooking-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Guess What’s in The Picture [Foodlike Substance]

Guess What’s in The Picture [Foodlike Substance]

Revaluations, by Caroline Hunt

In 1901, the progressive, feminist home economist, Caroline Hunt, presented a philosophically-oriented paper entitled, "Revaluations", which discussed home economics as the practical AND philosophical core of liberation and social relationships. (See Caroline Hunt: Philosopher for Home Economics by Marjorie East, 1982). Although I disagree with some of her statements, for example, that the women of the early 1900s who continued to make their own soap were enslaved to that task when they could free themselves for other things if they made the choice to purchase pre-made soaps, there are other statements that I find interesting.

Caroline begins the Revaluations like this: "Vacations are to the worker opportunities not only for bodily recuperation, but also for orientation, and for getting a view of [her or his] work in its wider relations". Later on she writes, "Progress comes when a [person] is sufficiently clear-headed to deduce from [their] own experience a correct conclusion in contradiction to the world's conclusions as expressed in custom, and is strong enough to institute for [themselves] a new line of procedure." I wouldn't be quoting these two statements if I didn't agree with them. But if I follow Caroline's line of thinking, when I come to my own conclusion that "enslaving" myself to the task of making my own butter is my "new line of procedure" based on the evaluation of my experience, then I am progressive.

This was the kind of thinking that Professor Mark Shutes of Youngstown State University was teaching me as an undergraduate in anthropology - to understand the individual as choices were made (Mark died in 2001 from pancreatic cancer). In our research, we were understanding individual farmer choices in the town of ancient Korinth on the Greek Peloponnese and recording crop choices using GIS (Geographical Information Systems). Even though customs in farming choices could be had, farmers continually proceeded with farming options that would often shock their neighbors, and of course some choices were incremental steps in new directions based on current economic knowledge and risk.

Did the Greek farmers go on vacation to re-orient their thinking and return knowing what crop and how much to plant next? I don't know. What I do know is that when we step away from the farm, leave our office desks behind, put down the hammer and nails, leave the house cleaning for another day, stop flipping hamburgers, get our noses out of pre-written philosophy books, and take even just a few days vacation for "orientation", we've set ourselves on a path of renewal, self-understanding, and broader perspective. That's what I call a souvenir.

Stir It Up, by Megan Elias

I'm almost finished reading Stir It Up by Megan Elias. This book is such a good and comprehensive history of home economics that I question whether I need to finish my dissertation! Well, yes, I should. Although Elias discusses history and topics that I am including in my own writing, my focus on relevancy and awareness problems in Extension is not addressed.

As I continue to think about the relevancy of home economics, I keep coming back to the problems of the economic turmoil occurring around the world. Is it the downturn of industrial Capitalism? Is it the lack of fair relationships in trade? Is everything Wal-Mart's fault? No. An easy answer would be nice, but when I consider all I have learned, and all I have researched, and all that I practice in my own life, the problem must be coming from one thing - an overall hegemonic lifestyle pattern from production to consumption. Read whatever overtones you think are in this statement, but the past 200 years of American history show that the push to purchase consumables and to leave one's own production behind has now created a stage of our own (un)planned obsolescence.

In thinking about "us" being obsolete, that really isn't it I suppose. What I really mean is the way in which we live and work, how we play and learn - it's boring. Ultimately I can only speak for myself, so let me tell you a brief story. Last week I worked my normal 8 hour day, and like most days this summer, it stunk! I was bored, but I had to be there if I wanted to be paid. As sometimes happens, I felt there was no real purpose for my job; there just wasn't going to be a practical outcome of my 8 hours behind the computer. That evening, I went to the Weavers Guild to begin winding my warp for some handwoven blankets. I turned on the radio, drank some of my coffee, and settled-in in the weaving room.

After placing my bag of yarn on the floor in front of the warping board, I grabbed some white yarn, made a loop, and hooked it over a peg. Then I began winding. To do this, you take the yarn and go back and forth across the warping board (see picture) spanning a yard in each direction. It had been over a year since I created a warp, and I had made about 8 passes with the yarn from top to bottom, and I suddenly found myself emotional! I teared up - why? Because of the shear joy it brought me to be doing something I love so much, to be in the process of making something meaningful, practical, and skillful - to know that what I was doing was worthwhile and would have an outcome I could see, touch, and literally wrap myself up in!

Now I didn't start working with fiber projects until 2000 when I learned to knit. Oh, if I had only learned about this unleashed passion earlier in life, I wonder if I would be just working to pay the bills, or if I would be living? Well, I got over the shear happiness and tears and went on to warp for 3 hours, doing the warping dance that comes with moving left to right with the yarn, lifting and moving my hands like flowing water. This is the kind of thing that a national economy can't induce through a mandatory education system; this can only be accomplished in the informal education, often a reflection of home and personal economy. It resists being obsolete, and in that, it is liberating and relevant.

Memorial Day in America

It's Memorial Day in America, and the TVs and Main Streets are full of images of war veterans. Frank Buckles, who as of today is the last known living WWI veteran at age 108, has received some fanfare as of late.

What often goes missing is the work that women do, and during WWI, home economists of the Cooperative Extension Service were significant players in war and home-front arenas. Remember, the Cooperative Extension Service was new, created by the Smith-Lever Act in 1914. At the beginning of WWI in 1915, the US was staying clear of participation with the exception of exporting crops to the Allies. The US government joined the Allies in 1917 when Germany said it would attack any kind of ship (merchant, passenger). This sent the United States into one of many conservation modes. The US Congress passed, and President Wilson approved, the Lever Act (Food Administration Act) which allowed for more governmental control over food production and distribution, as well as spreading agricultural knowledge for increasing production.

Under these new governmental guidelines, home economists in the Extension Service were deployed throughout the United States to teach women conservation practices including the growing of kitchen gardens in their own yards so that the majority of agricultural crops could be shifted to military use. They also taught women how to conserve their resources, redesign existing clothing, and to use socially cooperative practices to expand the availability of resources. Interestingly, there was a decline in the birthrate in the US at this time too, so reproduction rates may have followed a conservative line as well.

My point here is that somewhere in America there may be the last living Home Economist from the WWI era, and it sure would be nice to give her some well-deserved airtime as Mr. Buckles has gotten. In a book called The Story of Civilization by Will Durant (thank you Mr. Rogers for sharing this tidbit), Durant writes, "Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting, and doing things historians usually record - while, on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry, whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happens on the banks." And so we find home economists on the banks of civilization, and on the farms and in the cities, helping people negotiate the stuff of civilization that doesn't just float by on the stream, but the stuff that gets snagged in the roots of civilization found dangling from the vital and often eroded banks.