Shopping Experience

The last decade has witnessed a clear and steady rise of interest in consumer culture. Many commentators now argue that consumption rather than production is the axis of personal identity and meaningful social action - a standpoint that reverses the traditional view that consumption is an incidental, trivial feature in contemporary culture. This shrewd and probing book seeks to theorize shopping as an autonomous realm. It avoids the reductionist characteristics of economics and marketing. At the same time it avoids the moralizing tone of many contemporary discussions of shopping and consumption. The book uses an interdisciplinary resource base and comparative data to build-up a convincing analysis of the meaning of shopping today. Contributors discuss topics such as: the importance of shopping; the cultural and theoretical significance of shopping; women, the city and the department store; the future of supermarkets; the cultural construction of shopping; the ethnography of shopping; shopping and pleasure; and the 'scopic' regimes of shopping. The book also contains an appendix which gives a brief history and selected literature of shopping.