Young Scholars STOREP Award 2019: Agnès Le Tollec

The Young Scholar STOREP Award (500€) is conferred to the author (a young scholar under 40 years of age) of the best article presented at the Annual Conference. The article can focus on any topic of relevance to the history of political economy or to the main theme of the Conference, but it can also discuss any issue in contemporary economic analysis and policy whose conclusions are spelled out in contrast or continuity with past theoretical standpoints.

The STOREP 2019 Award (16th STOREP Annual Conference, Università di Siena) has been conferred to:

Agnès LE TOLLEC (ENS Paris Saclay, Université Paris I)

author of:

Home Economics as an Art of Improving Family Welfare:
Creating a Rational Consumer, 1924-1945

Motivation

This article analyzes how women were “educated” to rational consumption in the period from the 1920s to the end of World War II, as a way to counterbalance the negative influence of business and corporations.

The “home economists” had an important institutional influence and were instrumental in building a new image of the woman consumer who could be made rational by the science of home economics.

The paper presents interesting findings, thanks to the careful collection of historical materials (journals, published and unpublished works) and succeeds in providing the ground where an original and fruitful research program can develop.

The prize recognizes the quality of the historical research, the novelty of the topic and encourages the authors to expand it in the direction of further and wider theoretical insights into the subject.