ABSTRACT

This chapter shows how the interest of standardizers for market matters and consumer issues emerged indirectly through pure industrial preoccupations and efforts. It discusses how consumer advocates took the kinds of discourse seriously and played an important role in promoting consumer interests in the standardization process. The chapter also shows to what extent the history of industrial quality standards is strongly connected to the most recent issues of political consumerism, such as the current calls for the traceability of products, social standardization, and fair trade. In France, industrial concerns and initiatives preceded and prepared the rise of consumer activist preoccupations and actions. In 1960, the French government created a national committee for consumer affairs (CNC). Once introduced into standardization, the "standardized consumer" soon became a "consumer of quality", that is, both a consumer eager to receive the best information and products to purchase quality goods, and a consumer whom industrial quality managers created by their quality control activities.