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University of California Press

Technology as Freedom

The New Deal and the Electrical Modernization of the American Home

by Ronald C. Tobey (Author)
Price: $49.95 / £42.00
Publication Date: Nov 2023
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: World
Pages: 336
ISBN: 9780520323742
Trim Size: 6 x 9

About the Book

Before 1930, the domestic market for electrical appliances was segmented, but New Deal policies and programs created a true mass market, reshaping the electrical and housing markets and guiding them toward mandated social goals. The New Deal identified electrical refrigeration as a key technology to reform domestic labor, raise family health, and build family assets. New Deal incentives led to nearly fifty percent of Title I National Housing Act loans being used to buy electric refrigerators in the 1930s. New Deal policies ultimately created the mass commodity culture of home-owning families that typified the conservative 1950s.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1996.

About the Author

Ronald C. Tobey is Professor of History at the University of California, Riverside.

Reviews

"Technology as Freedom successfully bridges the gaps between business history, political history, social history, and the history of technology and helps restore the central place of state action in the mid-century transformations of American life."—Bruce Schulman, Boston University