FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT: CLASS, CONSUMPTION AND CITIZENSHIP IN PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA, 1892-1938

Abstract

Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the American economy and culture underwent dramatic changes. One such change was the shift in the household economy from a mostly self-sufficient producer to a consumer. As consumption became increasingly vital to everyday life, American citizenship began to be defined by its relation to the consumer economy: what you could buy and display to represent your social status. At the same time, immigrants flooded into America to fill labor shortages. The majority of these immigrants and their families worked in dangerous and low-paying jobs, and in cities like the study area of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania they filled blue-collar jobs in steel mills and factories. In this thesis, I ask how do differences in purchasing patterns represented in the material culture of middle-class and working-class domestic sites expose expressions of citizenship? To answer this question, this study compares four domestic sites from historically working-class neighborhoods and four domestic sites from a historically middle-class neighborhood in the greater Pittsburgh area. Oral histories and memoirs pertinent to these contexts were also identified and analyzed. The oral histories and memoirs reveal two different standards of living between the working and middle-class but a similar distaste for foreignness, even among the working-classes who were largely comprised of recent immigrants. Ethnic stereotyping was present even in the mills, where certain ethnic groups were assumed to be suited only for certain, often lower, positions. The comparative artifact analysis demonstrated the middle- and working- class artifacts were dispersed across the functional groups in similar manner, with the exception of the Structural group. More variation was evident within the categories of each group, however, significant overlap was still observed. Taken into the context of consumption as citizenship theory, it is proposed that working-class women, who were responsible for the near total management of the household and its funds, identified that full citizenship required shedding of all foreign markers and proper participation in the consumer economy. By imitating the purchasing patterns of the middle-class, the working-class families literally bought their way into recognition as full American citizens.