From Head Shops to Whole Foods

Pub Appointment: Feb 2020

ISBN: 9780231171595

336 Pages

Format: Paperback

List Price: $24.00 £18.99

Pub Date: August 2017

ISBN: 9780231171588

336 Pages

Format: Hardcover

List Price: $37.00 £30.00

Pub Engagement: Baronial 2017

ISBN: 9780231543088

336 Pages

Format: E-book

List Price: $23.99 £18.99

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In the 1960s and '70s, a diverse range of storefronts—including caput shops, African American bookstores, feminist businesses, and organic grocers—brought the work of the New Left, Black Power, feminism, environmentalism, and other movements into the market. Through shared ownership, limited growth, and democratic workplaces, these activist entrepreneurs offered alternatives to conventional turn a profit-driven corporate business models. By the center of the 1970s, thousands of these enterprises operated across the U.s.a.—only just a scattering survive today. Some, such as Whole Foods Marketplace, have abandoned their quest for collective political alter in favor of maximizing profits.

Vividly portraying the struggles, successes, and sacrifices of these unlikely entrepreneurs, From Caput Shops to Whole Foods writes a new history of social movements and capitalism by showing how activists embraced pocket-sized businesses in a way few historians have considered. The book challenges the widespread merely mistaken idea that activism and political dissent are inherently antithetical to participation in the marketplace. Joshua Clark Davis uncovers the historical roots of gimmicky interest in upstanding consumption, social enterprise, buying local, and mission-driven business organization, while as well showing how today's companies have adopted the language—but not oft the mission—of liberation and social change.

Rigorously researched and carefully written, From Caput Shops to Whole Foods uncovers one of the most unrecognized groups of the American activists in the '60s and '70s—activist entrepreneurs. They were widely influential then and remain then today. This book is critical for understanding contemporary companies that celebrate ethical practices and social alter. Ibram 10. Kendi, American University, writer of Stamped from the Starting time: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, winner of the 2022 National Book Award for Nonfiction
From Head Shops to Whole Foods offers an of import await at the afterlife of the directly action campaigns of the 1960s, recasting the history of small business as a desegregated history of American politics. With a critical centre and swift prose, Davis's volume recognizes the centrality of entrepreneurial politics as an expression of—and in the making of—American political culture, writ long and writ large. Truly exceptional. N. D. B. Connolly, Johns Hopkins University and cohost of the podcast BackStory
Davis has rewritten the sixties. His compelling account reveals how sixties radicals and rebels fought to co-opt capitalism to create a more only, diverse, and free marketplace. They lost more battles than they won, but their victories go on to shape our world. David Farber, University of Kansas, author of The Age of Great Dreams
Joshua Clark Davis's new book is a brilliant bout through a history yet untold, illuminating the fascinating by of a gimmicky marketplace that eagerly brands itself every bit countercultural but which has largely abandoned—even as it has been irreversibly shaped by—the activist politics that inspired it. Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, The New School For Social Enquiry
In this beautifully written, elegantly conceived, and deeply researched book, Davis traces the histories of 1960s-era small enterprises aimed at alternative forms of commercialism. His clear prose and precipitous assay illuminates the U.S. economic system's appetite for reform under capitalism. An essential piece of work. Charles McGovern, William and Mary
[From Head Shops to Whole Foods] avoids the stilted language of the academy to produce deft descriptions of African-American bookstores, the head shops of the drug counterculture, the businesses of second-wave feminism, and the arrival of health-food stores and their corporate apotheosis. Using solid, representative examples, Davis traces each vein of activist entrepreneurialism to testify how activists' original intentions were frustrated, altered, or abandoned. Publishers Weekly
Scholarly in tone and approach simply accessible and of interest to students of business history likewise every bit to budding entrepreneurs. Kirkus Reviews
[From Head Shops to Whole Foods] makes a valuable contribution to the study of American capitalism and consumerism. Information technology reveals some well-worn paths in American history but in new ways, while also establishing some of the ironic origins of today'south corporate citizens. The Metropole: The Official Blog of the Urban History Clan
[Joshua Clark Davis] has written about one of the about important legacies of activism in the 1960s: the combination of activist politics with the entrepreneurial spirit. . . . With accessible prose, considerable inquiry in various athenaeum, and an intriguing analysis of the combination of capitalism and radicalism, From Head Shops to Whole Foods is a must-read for many of our readers at S-USIH. Robert J. Greene Two, Society for U.S. Intellectual History {Southward-USIH)
An extremely welcome and insightful addition to the deepening historiography of 1960s-era activism. . . . This history helps u.s. imagine alternative business organisation structures, economic goals, and definitions of success inside the consumer capitalist model. As a new era of activist entrepreneurs swells in our own historical moment, From Head Shops to Whole Foods offers quite a bit of useful nutrient for thought. Patrick Jones, H-1960s
Business is not the first thing that comes to heed when 1 thinks nigh the countercultural movements of the 1960s. But in From Head Shops to Whole Foods Joshua Clark Davis makes a compelling case that the businesses he examines provide a useful vantage point on the counterculture while also allowing a new perspective on today's business. Ross Bassett, Journal of American History
Davis is an fantabulous storyteller, capturing both the romance of the various movements and their passionate activist founders. Choice
With its beauteous concision, convincing conclusions, and accessible writing, this book is essential reading for students of commercialism, social movements, and popular consumer culture in the tardily twentieth-century United States and today. Jennifer Le Zotte, Business History Review
[A] thoroughly researched and well-told book. Kyle Williams, The Hedgehog Review
From Head Shops to Whole Foods enriches the historiography of Sixties-era social movements by providing what should get the major narrative of activist business activities during the long Sixties. . . . The most of import books on the American counterculture use the counterculture equally evidence of broader structural changes, charting the intersection of countercultures with marketing, digital life, environmentalism, spirituality, gender, citizenship, or drugs. From Caput Shops to Whole Foods follows in that tradition. By tracing how countercultural values shaped a humane concern culture and by insisting on the seriousness of ventures that aimed at sustainable development, Davis has written the most important book on the counterculture to be published this decade. Blake Slonecker, The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics, and Culture
A superb example of the new history of capitalism. . . . Davis masterfully blends business and social history. Jason L. Newton, Industrial & Labor Relations Review
An ambitious and widely researched text. . . . Davis'due south research is deep and thorough. He brings together several movements that are often approached in isolation and provides the lens of concern and entrepreneurship. This is no pocket-size contribution to several historiographies. In that location is much to learn from this text. Laura Warren Loma, Enterprise & Order
Davis'south crisp prose makes for an accessible read and his volume makes a very skilful case for studying activist entrepreneurs equally role of the trademark movements of the 1960s, instead of focusing solely on demonstrations and mass meetings, and for appreciating their legacies on the gimmicky marketplace. . . . Davis must be congratulated for contributing to the history of postwar business and the history of the long 1960s in what is ultimately a fine slice of scholarship. Canadian Journal of History

Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
i. Activist Business: Origins and Ideologies
ii. Liberation Through Literacy: African American Bookstores, Black Power, and the Mainstreaming of Black Books
3. The Business concern of Getting High: Head Shops, Countercultural Capitalism, and the Battle Over Marijuana
4. The "Feminist Economical Revolution": Businesses in the Women'south Motion
5. Natural Foods Stores: Environmental Entrepreneurs and the Perils of Growth
half-dozen. Perseverance and Appropriation: Activist Concern in the Xx-Beginning Century
Decision
Notes
Index

  • Joshua Davis interviewed on KPCC "AirTalk"
  • Read a review of the book in Publishers Weekly
  • Listen to a New Books Network interview with the author
  • Read Joshua Clark Davis's essay "The FBI's War on Black-Owned Bookstores" in The Atlantic
  • Heed to Joshua Clark Davis on the ascent and fall of social entrepreneurism on KPCC'due south AirTalk
  • Read a review in The Metropole, The Official Blog of the Urban History Association

About the Author

Joshua Clark Davis is assistant professor of history at the University of Baltimore.