Consumption in lieu of Membership: Reconfiguring Popular Charitable Action in Post-World War II Britain

Abstract

The year 1947 saw the opening of Oxfam’s first permanent charity shop on Broad Street in Oxford. It was the prototype of what was soon to become a national franchise of Oxfam shops and it marked the genesis of widespread popular engagement with charity in the form of consumption. Donations and purchases of goods in this second-hand shop space were not simply a financial means to a humanitarian end, these shops offered active engagements with the charity; engagements that shaped donor and shopper knowledge of the organisation and that cemented a particular form of charity participation. This interdisciplinary analysis contributes to an emerging body of historical and geographical scholarship that is exploring the intersection between charitable action and consumption by beginning to fill a lacuna of research on the development of charity shopping as a key form of popular philanthropic action.