Josh Davis’s From Head Shops to Whole Foods: The Rise and Fall of Activist Entrepreneurs is an ambitious and widely researched text. The witty title touches on two of the four activist groups and their attendant movements explored by Davis: head shops and their engagement with both the antiwar movement and the movement to legalize marijuana, and natural food markets that pivoted environmentalist, labor, and animal rights movements. These two sets of “activist entrepreneurs,” a term that Davis here coins, are joined by black bookstores and their relationship to both civil rights and Black Power, as well as feminist businesses that emerged from the feminist movement. The four sets of activist entrepreneurs, though widely divergent, come together in Davis’s work through a shared commitment to “participatory economics” or “the shared idea that citizens could regain power over their lives by making their daily experiences in capitalist society more humane, authentic, and even politically progressive or radical” (3).

Activist entrepreneurs are not new, as Davis points out. They have a long history stretching from the abolitionist movement, to labor organizations who “established cooperatively owned stores,” to feminists who sold both literature about the movement and memorabilia, to Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), among others. Yet, in the postwar era, Davis argues, activist businesses “far exceeded their predecessors in number, influence, and geographic reach” (17), believing “their businesses could serve the purposes of social movements and progressive change by emphasizing cooperation over competition and solidarity over sales margins” (29). This claim is also not new, though Davis gives it greater breadth. Most notably, scholars of African American history have begun to engage the subject, including The Economic Civil Rights Movement, edited by Michael Ezra, and The Business of Black Power, edited by Laura Warren Hill and Julia Rabig.^{Footnote 1} Davis gives such arguments new life in extending them to feminism, environmentalism, and head shops. He further argues that at the very moment the nation experienced postwar prosperity, young people, black people, women, and those promoting alternative lifestyle choices felt profound alienation from the center. As such, they sought avenues to change their circumstances, and the nation, through activist businesses.

In Chapter 2, “Liberation through Literacy: African American Bookstores, Black Power, and the Mainstreaming of Black Books,” Davis argues that black bookstore owners sought three ends: political knowledge and reeducation to ensure black self-determination and self-definition; black public spaces wherein African Americans (and others) could read, talk, engage in politics, and shop within a black environment; and the rejection of profit seeking as a motive for their businesses. Such bookstores sold literature to be sure, but also “dashikis, Afro-Sheen, and posters and T-shirts emblazoned with slogans of Black empowerment” (48). Many stores, according to Davis, achieved considerable success (economic and otherwise) until the mid-1970s, when the Black Power movement experienced a decline. The rise of mega- and online bookstores, which both carried books by black authors, contributed to the decline of black bookstores, and indeed most independent booksellers.

In Chapter 3, “The Business of Getting High: Head Shops, Countercultural Capitalism, and the Battle over Marijuana,” Davis suggests that head shop activist entrepreneurs were “critical supporters of the nascent movement to reform and eradicate the country’s drug laws,” but were “admittedly less connected to radical politics than other activist businesses were” (85). Like black bookstore owners, head shop owners understood themselves to be providing a community space, which could serve political ends, while they peddled their wares: marijuana paraphernalia, posters, buttons, and the Marijuana Review and High Times magazines. As marijuana use became increasingly mainstream, several states moved toward decriminalizing its use. The reaction was swift and severe as parent groups, suburban warriors in their own right, became increasingly outspoken and strategic in their targeting of head shops. According to Davis, few head shops were able to survive. Though the wide availability and popularity of head shops undoubtedly contributed to the greater use and mainstreaming of marijuana, the argument that head shop entrepreneurs were politically engaged or involved in the decriminalization movement is not as convincingly made as is Davis’s work on the relationship between Black Power and black bookstores.

In Chapter 4, “The ‘Feminist Economic Revolution’: Businesses in the Women’s Movement,” Davis abandons the strategy of examining a singular type of business tied to a particular social movement. Instead, he works from the movement (feminism) and ties it back to a number of businesses, focusing in this chapter on women-owned banks and credit unions, bookstores, and clothing and jewelry shops. Feminist entrepreneurs, distinct from women entrepreneurs, needed to “liberate themselves from the capitalist structures that left them dependent on men.” To do so, “feminists believed they needed to continue to build their own economy of self-sustaining, participatory, and democratic businesses” (153). Yet Davis shows there was little agreement among feminist and women entrepreneurs regarding the role feminist businesses should play, what they should do, or how they should act. Thus they reflected, in many ways, the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s. He argues, however, that women-owned businesses were the most enduring.

Davis’s last substantive chapter, “Natural Food Stores: Environmental Entrepreneurs and the Perils of Growth,” takes on the history of natural foods markets, namely the meteoric rise of Whole Foods. Initially, natural foods sellers “understood natural foods not just as a business but also as a larger crusade for sustainability, health, and harmony,” Davis asserts (180). And as such, they aligned with several movements, rather than a singular movement, including the environmental, health, labor, and animal rights movements. By the 1980s, however, small stores engaging in these practices and with these movements were greatly reduced, having been replaced by larger chain stores, such as Whole Foods, which “despite embracing some progressive causes and democratic workplace policies … actively opposed organized labor” (215).

In some ways, the activist entrepreneurs whom Davis discusses, though sharing a sense of alienation, are widely disparate figures with distinct, if not altogether unrelated, goals. It is difficult to hold pot-smoking, LSD-dropping, self-identified hippies who feel “alienated from society” in the same regard that one holds black activists in a fight for their daily survival, dignity, and rights, or women fighting for the right to own businesses or to have credit in their own names. There is disequilibrium, too, in the choosing of three specific types of business—black bookstores, head shops, and natural food stores—and the umbrella of feminist businesses that span a multitude of products and practices. Yet, Davis’s greater argument, that this historical moment produced a different and deeper type of progressive or activist entrepreneurship, adds considerably to what we know about business history and the attendant movements explored in these chapters. While each sought to transform American culture, all failed to do so. Yet their contributions, examples, and successes are perhaps greater than Davis allows.

The book has some drawbacks. The chapters are lengthy at nearly fifty pages each. At times, some become circuitous and repetitive. There are minor errors, too, which frustrate the reader. The UNIA, Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association, is referred to throughout as the United Negro Improvement Association. Other substantive drawbacks include cumulative footnotes at the end of each paragraph with references to numerous texts and quotes, not all of which are easily identifiable. The book has no bibliography and only an abbreviated index. These are likely editorial decisions, but they do detract from the book’s appeal for use in the classroom and as a quick reference source.

Despite this, Davis’s research is deep and thorough. He brings together several movements that are often approached in isolation and provides the lens of business and entrepreneurship. This is no small contribution to several historiographies. There is much to learn from this text.