The Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live

The Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live
Author: Danielle Dreilinger
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2021-05-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1324004509

The surprising, often fiercely feminist, always fascinating, yet barely known, history of home economics. The term “home economics” may conjure traumatic memories of lopsided hand-sewn pillows or sunken muffins. But common conception obscures the story of the revolutionary science of better living. The field exploded opportunities for women in the twentieth century by reducing domestic work and providing jobs as professors, engineers, chemists, and businesspeople. And it has something to teach us today. In the surprising, often fiercely feminist and always fascinating The Secret History of Home Economics, Danielle Dreilinger traces the field’s history from Black colleges to Eleanor Roosevelt to Okinawa, from a Betty Crocker brigade to DIY techies. These women—and they were mostly women—became chemists and marketers, studied nutrition, health, and exercise, tested parachutes, created astronaut food, and took bold steps in childhood development and education. Home economics followed the currents of American culture even as it shaped them. Dreilinger brings forward the racism within the movement along with the strides taken by women of color who were influential leaders and innovators. She also looks at the personal lives of home economics’ women, as they chose to be single, share lives with other women, or try for egalitarian marriages. This groundbreaking and engaging history restores a denigrated subject to its rightful importance, as it reminds us that everyone should learn how to cook a meal, balance their account, and fight for a better world.

The Secret History of Home Economics

The Secret History of Home Economics
Author: Danielle Dreilinger
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022-05-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1324021861

An NPR Favorite History Book of 2021 The surprising, often fiercely feminist, always fascinating, yet barely known, history of home economics. The term “home economics” may conjure traumatic memories of lopsided hand-sewn pillows or sunken muffins. But common conception obscures the story of the revolutionary science of better living. The field exploded opportunities for women in the twentieth century by reducing domestic work and providing jobs as professors, engineers, chemists, and businesspeople. And it has something to teach us today. In the surprising, often fiercely feminist and always fascinating The Secret History of Home Economics, Danielle Dreilinger traces the field’s history from Black colleges to Eleanor Roosevelt to Okinawa, from a Betty Crocker brigade to DIY techies. These women—and they were mostly women—became chemists and marketers, studied nutrition, health, and exercise, tested parachutes, created astronaut food, and took bold steps in childhood development and education. Home economics followed the currents of American culture even as it shaped them. Dreilinger brings forward the racism within the movement along with the strides taken by women of color who were influential leaders and innovators. She also looks at the personal lives of home economics’ women, as they chose to be single, share lives with other women, or try for egalitarian marriages. This groundbreaking and engaging history restores a denigrated subject to its rightful importance, as it reminds us that everyone should learn how to cook a meal, balance their account, and fight for a better world.

Rethinking Home Economics

Rethinking Home Economics
Author: Sarah Stage
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2018-07-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1501729942

Until recently, historians tended to dismiss home economics as little more than a conspiracy to keep women in the kitchen. This landmark volume initiates collaboration among home economists, family and consumer science professionals, and women's historians. What knits the essays together is a willingness to revisit the subject of home economics with neither indictment nor apology. The volume includes significant new work that places home economics in the twentieth century within the context of the development of women's professions. Rethinking Home Economics documents the evolution of a profession from the home economics movement launched by Ellen Richards in the early twentieth century to the modern field renamed Family and Consumer Sciences in 1994. The essays in this volume show the range of activities pursued under the rubric of home economics, from dietetics and parenting, teaching and cooperative extension work, to test kitchen and product development. Exploration of the ways in which gender, race, and class influenced women's options in colleges and universities, hospitals, business, and industry, as well as government has provided a greater understanding of the obstacles women encountered and the strategies they used to gain legitimacy as the field developed.

Home Economics

Home Economics
Author: Jennifer Mcknight Trontz
Publisher: Quirk Books
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2014-05-13
Genre: House & Home
ISBN: 1594747504

Revisit the home-economics textbooks of yore to get the best vintage advice on shopping, cooking, decorating, and budgeting your way to a happy, healthy household “Housekeeping is becoming more and more a matter of science, and the laurels are bound to fall to the woman who conducts her household in a business-like way.” Let the thrifty sensibility of yesteryear be your guide as you shop for the most economical foods, choose wall colors scientifically, clean with natural products, look your best without breaking the bank, and budget your way to frugal efficiency. In this amazing collection of clever wisdom and practical advice drawn from vintage home-economics textbooks, you’ll find everything you need to get back to basics and run a healthy and happy household. Home Economics covers all the categories of delightful domesticity: • Health & Hygiene • Cookery & Recipes • Manners & Etiquette • Design & Decoration • Cleaning & Safety • Gardening & Crafts Rediscover the art and science of keeping house—economically!

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Author: John Perkins
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Total Pages: 430
Release: 2004-11-09
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1576755126

Perkins, a former chief economist at a Boston strategic-consulting firm, confesses he was an "economic hit man" for 10 years, helping U.S. intelligence agencies and multinationals cajole and blackmail foreign leaders into serving U.S. foreign policy and awarding lucrative contracts to American business.

Stir it Up

Stir it Up
Author: Megan J. Elias
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2008
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780812240795

Stir It Up explores the changing aims of home economics while putting the phenomena of Martha Stewart, Rachael Ray, Ty Pennington, and the "Mommy Wars" into historical context.

Secret Origins of Modern Microeconomics

Secret Origins of Modern Microeconomics
Author: Robert Burton Ekelund
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 494
Release: 1999-03-15
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780226199993

Using documents previously unavailable in English, the authors present a cohesive and original picture of French economic thought that solidly documents the contributions of Dupuit and his colleagues. Ekelund and Hebert build their argument by focusing on the development of economic theory in the peculiar milieu of postrevolutionary France in an attempt to identify the essence of the French contribution and the extent to which the French legacy benefited other economists of international acclaim. They conclude that the kinds of issues in economic theory and policy that Dupuit and his colleagues found arresting and worthy of analysis in the nineteenth century are still pertinent today and will continue to interest economists into the twenty-first century. This seminal work will be of great importance to historians of economics and all economists interested in the foundations of modern microeconomics.

The Academic Kitchen

The Academic Kitchen
Author: Maresi Nerad
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 220
Release: 1999-01-07
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1438414447

The Academic Kitchen tells the story of the evolution of an all-women's department, the Department of Home Economics, at the University of California, Berkeley from 1905 to 1954. The book's unique focus on the connection between gender and departmental status challenges organizational theorists and higher education specialists to reconsider their traditional analysis of academic departments. By incorporating gender in the analysis, Nerad reveals the process by which departments traditionally dominated by women, including education, library science, nursing, social welfare, and home economics, begin as separate (and unequal) programs and are subsequently eliminated (or sustained without economic rewards, prestige, and power) when administrators no longer regard them as useful.

Cubed

Cubed
Author: Nikil Saval
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2015-01-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0345802802

A New York Times Notable Book • Daily Beast Best Nonfiction of 2014 • Inc. Magazine's Most Thought-Provoking Books of the Year “Man is born free, but he is everywhere in cubicles.” How did we get from Scrooge’s office to “Office Space”? From bookkeepers in dark countinghouses to freelancers in bright cafes? What would the world be like without the vertical file cabinet? What would the world be like without the office at all? In Cubed, Nikil Saval chronicles the evolution of the office in a fascinating, often funny, and sometimes disturbing anatomy of the white-collar world and how it came to be the way it is. Drawing on the history of architecture and business, as well as a host of pop culture artifacts—from Mad Men to Dilbert (and, yes, The Office)—and ranging in time from the earliest clerical houses to the surprisingly utopian origins of the cubicle to the funhouse campuses of Silicon Valley, Cubed is an all-encompassing investigation into the way we work, why we do it the way we do (and often don’t like it), and how we might do better.

The Dark Side of Management

The Dark Side of Management
Author: Gerard Hanlon
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2015-07-24
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317624556

What isn’t management and why doesn’t it matter? This compelling book leads the reader away from the stories told by managers and management theories to show the secret history of the field. In characterizing the progress of management as a war on workers, this book offers a controversial and revealing alternative intellectual history of this overwhelming discipline. The author employs a unique range of theories and sources, including the founding fathers of management, US labour and social history, and earlier intellectual figures such as Marx and Weber alongside the contemporary insights of Foucault and European and American workerist and post-workerist thought, to shed light on the world of management. This book is key reading for researchers and students across the social sciences. With a controversial and stimulating approach, it also engages readers with a general interest in business and management issues. Are managers neoliberalism’s executioners? Read more from this author here.