The 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 actionùa situation that reverses the traditional view of consumption as an incidental, trivial feature of contemporary culture. This shrewd and probing book seeks to develop theories of shopping as an autonomous realm of experience. It aims to avoid both the reductionism characteristic of economics and marketing and 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. It includes chapters by Mary Douglas on the importance of shopping; Mica Nava on women, the city, and the department store; Rachel Bowlby on supermarket features; Cecilia Fredriksson on the cultural construction of shopping; Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen and Pasi MSenpSS on the ethnography of shopping; Colin Campbell on shopping, pleasure, and the sex war; and Pasi Falk on the "scopic" regimes of shopping. The Shopping Experience provides the first comprehensive overview of the modern phenomenon of shopping. As such, it will be essential reading for students and researchers working in the fields of sociology, cultural studies, and anthropology.