Full Description
The degree to which shopping, or, more broadly, consumerism, is both critiqued and defended in American society confirms the role that commercial goods play in our daily lives. This collection of essays provides case studies depicting selected aspects of this engaging activity. The authors include several historians with diverging specialties, an art historian, an anthropologist, an environmental journalist, a geographer and urban planner, and practicing artists. Each author demonstrates how a material culture perspective—a focus on the relationship between people and their things—can illuminate a specific corner of consumption. Connecting the essays are concerns about the spaces in which shopping occurs; about the experience of shopping itself, both individual and social; and about its economic, environmental, and personal downsides. Collectively, these essays demonstrate how a material culture perspective on shopping yields insights into multiple aspects of American culture.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction, Deborah C. Andrews
Chapter 1: The Spaces of Shopping: An Historical Overview, Sandy Isenstadt
Chapter 2: Woolworth to Wal-Mart: Mass Merchandising and the Changing American Culture of Consumption, Susan Strasser
Chapter 3: Shopping Malls: "Machines for Selling", David Ames
Chapter 4: Passages: From Arcade to Virtual Arcadia, Lance Winn
Chapter 5: The Shop Around the Corner: Change, Continuity, and the Independent Neighborhood Grocer, Anne Krulikowski
Chapter 6: Farmers' Markets, Food, and the Architecture of Control, J. Richie Garrison
Chapter 7: Living in a Bubble in the 1950s: Finding the Material Culture of Effervescence, Jay Gitlin
Chapter 8: A Toxic Safari in a Big Box Store, McKay Jenkins
Chapter 9: Secondhand Learning: Using Secondhand Consumerism in the Classroom, Helen Sheumaker
Chapter 10: In Conversation: Community, Women, and Work in the American Garage Sale, Gretchen Herrmann with Martha Rosler
About the Contributors
