This book seeks to theorize shopping as an autonomous realm. It aims to avoid the reductionism characteristics of economics and marketing. At the same time it aims to avoid the moralizing tone of many contemporary discussions of shopping and consumption. It uses an interdisciplinary resource base and comparative data to build-up a convincing analysis of the meaning of shopping today and includes chapters on : the importance of shopping ; the cultural and theoretical significance of shopping ; women, the city and the department store ; supermarket futures ; the cultural construction of shopping ; the ethnography of shopping ; shopping, pleasure and the sex war ; the 'scopic' regimes of shopping.
