About the project
Welcome to the HomeEc History Map!
The Home Ec History Map (HEH Map) is an online interactive map about the history of home economics. Its goal is to shed light on lesser-known female figures and facilitate research on the history of home economics. The HEH Map addresses the underrepresentation of women’s archives by featuring the locations of these archives alongside key individuals and institutions relevant to the field of home economics.
Why Study the History of Home Economics
In the early 20th century, the overwhelming majority of home economists were women, commonly referred to as “home economists,” “household economists,” or “social economists.” They occupied a unique academic space, separate from that of male economists. Although home economists initially focused in the late 19th century on hygiene, nutrition, and household practices to improve people’s living conditions, they significantly contributed to the economics discipline in the first half of the 20th century (especially regarding labor and consumption economics) and produced critical empirical data that laid the foundation for consumer research and marketing (see e.g. Stage and Vincenti 1997, Goldstein 2012). While the contribution of women economists to the discipline has gained wider recognition since the 1990s (see e.g. Dimand, Dimand, and Forget 1995, Cicarelli and Cicarelli 2003, Forget 2011, Madden and Dimand 2020, Chassonery-Zaïgouche, Forget, and Singleton 2022), the contribution of home economists to the history of economic thought remains largely uncharted (among the few notable exceptions are, Pietrykowski 2009, Stapleford 2004, Trezzini 2016). This resulted in a general oversight by historians of economics regarding the significance of both women economists and home economics in the history of the discipline.
Goal of the Project
The primary objective of the Home Ec History Map is to advance research on the history of home economics, with a particular focus on the period between the late 19th and up until the 1950s. You will be able to play around with the filters (places, dates, etc.) and learn about each data point through the “info panel” (biographical note, history of the institution, location of the archives/records, etc.). While the initial phase of the project will be focusing on North America, where the home economics movement was the most significant, its long-term goal is to display data points worldwide.
Researching female economists presents unique challenges due to historical biases and the underrepresentation of women in traditional archival sources. The lack of recognition and documentation of female economists’ contributions has resulted in a dearth of archival materials available for research. The HEH Map aims to address this gap by centralizing information on female home economists, thereby providing researchers with access to unknown or overlooked sources.
How to Use the Map
Feel free to play around with the different filters to find people or institutions displayed on the map via the filter panel. Please note that this map is a work in progress and shouldn’t be considered an exhaustive source of information on home economists. It aims to assist users in discover new information and centralizing archival locations related to home economics. Exercise caution when using the map for research purposes.
Who Am I?
David PHILIPPY is a historian of economics, and an associate member at SciencesPo Paris (Center for the Sociology of Organisations). He holds a PhD in History of Economics from the University of Lausanne (2022, HEC Lausanne). In his PhD dissertation, The World Behind the Demand Curve: A History of the Economics of Consumption in the US (1885–1934), he studied the role of home economists and female economists in the development of the study of consumption in the history of American economic thought. He is interested in the epistemological and gender issues at play in the history of economics to understand how fields of study emerge and how researchers shape their identities.
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The Home Ec History Map has benefited from the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).
Credit (painting): Edith Walker Cook, Lake Placid at Twilight (1868), Oil on Canvas. Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth.