At Asian food market, a sign of lost confidence

…Empty rice shelves encase a fear that has transcended American culture, as consumers have learned that things they saw as entitlements – food staples, fuel for a commute, toys, and toothpaste free of poison – could no longer be taken for granted.

“I was like, ‘What is going on?’ ” said Peter Park, a 28-year-old Willamette University law student who moved to Seattle from South Korea when he was 15. “This is the last country that I thought would run out of food.”


…Until bank failures triggered a national credit crisis last month, the 2008 lexicon of economic anxiety was one learned at points of purchase. There Americans confronted the first threat in a generation to the “right to plenty,” part of the melding of American consumer culture and its notions of citizenship during the postwar period, said Elizabeth Cohen, a Harvard historian and author of “Consumer’s Republic.”

“As consumers, we are becoming increasingly dependent on other countries and their trade practices. We’ve seen that around jobs,” said Cohen. “It is seen as more American and less radical to talk about citizens and voters as consumers.”

Boston Globe