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Book Spree

    Book Details:
  • Author : Pamela Klaffke
  • Publisher : arsenal pulp press
  • Release : 2003
  • ISBN : 9781551521435
  • Pages : 236 pages

Download or read book Spree written by Pamela Klaffke and published by arsenal pulp press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this age of high consumption shopping is going stronger than ever as a national pastime. We are a culture obsessed and beguiled by the desire for consumer goods. Journalist and shopping addict Klaffke documents the history of shopping, from a time when cattle were currency to the current age of contemporary shopping phenomenon like QVC and eBay. From the history of the mall, to a look at the darker side of shopping culture - kleptomania, shopping addictions, anti-consumerism - this is the definitive chronology of the materialist age.

Book A Cultural History of Shopping in Antiquity

Download or read book A Cultural History of Shopping in Antiquity written by Mary Harlow and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-06-02 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Cultural History of Shopping was a Library Journal Best in Reference selection for 2022. Covering the period from 500 BCE to 500 CE, this is the first book to address the cultural history of shoppers and shopping in antiquity. Evidence for the existence of shops has been found across many archaeological sites in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East but the study of shops and retailing in antiquity is a relatively new subject. From Classical Greece through to the Late Roman Empire, shopping shifted from being a means to an end – a method of supplementing the family diet or providing material goods the household could not manufacture itself – to a form of experience where the processes of browsing and not purchasing became as important as buying. This dramatic transformation is a reflection of the changing material desires of these societies and their perspectives on the ways in which the fulfilment of those desires could be achieved. Recurring themes in this interdisciplinary volume include the lives of 'ordinary' people; the relationship between gender and shopping; the contrast between Greece and Rome; the attitudes towards shopkeepers; the placing of shops in the cityscape; and the zoning of particular crafts and products. A Cultural History of Shopping in Antiquity presents an overview of the period with themes addressing practices and processes; spaces and places; shoppers and identities; luxury and everyday; home and family; visual and literary representations; reputation, trust and credit; and governance, regulation and the state.

Book A Cultural History of Shopping in the Early Modern Age

Download or read book A Cultural History of Shopping in the Early Modern Age written by Tim Reinke-Williams and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-06-02 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Cultural History of Shopping was a Library Journal Best in Reference selection for 2022. Across Europe, the Early Modern period was marked by political, religious and cultural upheaval, and saw the emergence of the first global economy, developments which profoundly impacted how people shopped and what they were able to buy. This volume engages with the key debates around continuity and change in consumer behavior in the 'long 16th century' and the ways in which shopping became an educational and exciting act for many women, men and children across the social spectrum: shops and market stalls were filled with an increasingly wide range of goods made by skilled craftspeople and transported by merchants making evermore ambitious and lucrative journeys across the world. Even servants and the poor were exposed to these new things, for they could consume by eye and ear what they could not afford to take home in material form. Although they did not yet have a word for the activity of “shopping,” in this period men and women came to understand that this activity was more than a functional act to acquire necessities. A Cultural History of Shopping in the Early Modern Age presents an overview of the period with themes addressing practices and processes; spaces and places; shoppers and identities; luxury and everyday; home and family; visual and literary representations; reputation, trust and credit; and governance, regulation and the state.

Book A Cultural History of Shopping in the Modern Age

Download or read book A Cultural History of Shopping in the Modern Age written by Vicki Howard and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-06-02 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Cultural History of Shopping was a Library Journal Best in Reference selection for 2022. In the modern consumer age that emerged after the First World War, shopping became a ubiquitous cultural practice. Despite its apparent universality, the historicity and contingency of shopping should not be ignored: its meaning was always inextricably linked to the political, material and economic contexts within which it took place. Gendered female for the most part, shopping continued to evoke different cultural responses, embraced as liberatory by some, condemned as frivolous by others. Business decisions and public policies helped construct the frameworks within which new, often American-led, shopping cultures emerged, from downtown department stores to chain stores to suburban shopping malls. The digital revolution in shopping that began in the last decade of the 20th century has changed the face of cities and towns and led to the closure of many bricks-and-mortar stores but, as this volume explores, the shopper remains very much at the center of Western capitalist societies. A Cultural History of Shopping in the Modern Age presents an overview of the period with themes addressing practices and processes; spaces and places; shoppers and identities; luxury and everyday; home and family; visual and literary representations; reputation, trust and credit; and governance, regulation and the state.

Book A Cultural History of Shopping in the Age of Enlightenment

Download or read book A Cultural History of Shopping in the Age of Enlightenment written by Ilja Van Damme and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-06-02 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Cultural History of Shopping was a Library Journal Best in Reference selection for 2022. The 'consumer revolution' of the 18th century has been the subject of much debate among historians but it seems clear there was also a 'retail revolution': a period of unprecedented growth in material goods was accompanied by a proliferation of retail spaces and techniques which brought new fashions and imported commodities to the homes of consumers. Governments responded to a growing culture of polite and civilized behavior across society by stimulating urban renewal for leisure and shopping: new pavements, street lighting, green promenades, theatres, coffee houses, and adjacent shopping streets were laid-out everywhere in Europe. As the 18th century drew to its close, 'shopping' had become a publicly accepted and celebrated leisure pursuit, gaining its proper meaning in multiple languages. A Cultural History of Shopping in the Age of Enlightenment presents an overview of the period with themes addressing practices and processes; spaces and places; shoppers and identities; luxury and everyday; home and family; visual and literary representations; reputation, trust and credit; and governance, regulation and the state.

Book A Cultural History of Shopping in the Age of Revolution and Empire

Download or read book A Cultural History of Shopping in the Age of Revolution and Empire written by Erika Rappaport and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-06-02 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Cultural History of Shopping was a Library Journal Best in Reference selection for 2022. Shopping emerged as a special pleasure and problem during the period between the revolutionary upheavals of the late 18th century and the opening salvoes of the Great War. New shops, new products, new class and gender ideologies, new standards of comfort and hygiene, and rising living standards for some meant that people, especially women, spent more time shopping and engaging in consumer-oriented activities beyond the walls of the shop. At the same time, social commentators, local and national authorities, economists, and many husbands became concerned about the 'dangers' of shopping, believing that the department store was emancipating women and destroying society in the process. This volume explores shopping in the 19th century as a varied and embedded social, political, economic, and cultural activity. It draws out the continuities with earlier periods as well as examining how the department store came to be seen as both symbol and generator of profound economic, social, and cultural change. A Cultural History of Shopping in the Age of Revolution and Empire presents an overview of the period with themes addressing practices and processes; spaces and places; shoppers and identities; luxury and everyday; home and family; visual and literary representations; reputation, trust and credit; and governance, regulation and the state.

Book A Cultural History of Shopping in the Middle Ages

Download or read book A Cultural History of Shopping in the Middle Ages written by James Davis and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-06-02 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Cultural History of Shopping was a Library Journal Best in Reference selection for 2022. Throughout Europe, the collapse of Roman authority from the 5th century fractured existing networks of commerce and trade including shopping. The infrastructure of trade was slowly rebuilt over the centuries that followed with the growth of beach markets, emporia, seasonal fairs and periodic markets until, in the late Middle Ages, the permanent shop re-emerged as an established part of market spaces, both in towns and larger urban centers. Medieval society was a 'display culture' and by the 14th century there was a marked increase in the consumption of manufactures and imported goods among the lower classes as well as the elite. This volume surveys our understanding of medieval retail markets, shops and shopping from a range of perspectives - spatial, material culture, literary, archaeological and economic. A Cultural History of Shopping in the Middle Ages presents an overview of the period with themes addressing practices and processes; spaces and places; shoppers and identities; luxury and everyday; home and family; visual and literary representations; reputation, trust and credit; and governance, regulation and the state.

Book A Cultural History of Shopping

Download or read book A Cultural History of Shopping written by Jon Stobart and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A Cultural History of Shopping presents the first ever historical survey of shopping from antiquity to the present day. With six volumes covering 2,500 years, this set focuses upon the intersection point between consumption and retailing and offers the most authoritative history yet available of shopping in Western cultures"--

Book The Steal

    Book Details:
  • Author : Rachel Shteir
  • Publisher : Penguin
  • Release : 2011-06-30
  • ISBN : 1101516283
  • Pages : 256 pages

Download or read book The Steal written by Rachel Shteir and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-06-30 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of shoplifting, revealing the roots of our modern dilemma. Rachel Shteir's The Steal is the first serious study of shoplifting, tracking the fascinating history of this ancient crime. Dismissed by academia and the mainstream media and largely misunderstood, shoplifting has become the territory of moralists, mischievous teenagers, tabloid television, and self-help gurus. But shoplifting incurs remarkable real-life costs for retailers and consumers. The "crime tax"-the amount every American family loses to shoplifting-related price inflation-is more than $400 a year. Shoplifting cost American retailers $11.7 billion in 2009. The theft of one $5.00 item from Whole Foods can require sales of hundreds of dollars to break even. The Steal begins when shoplifting entered the modern record as urbanization and consumerism made London into Europe's busiest mercantile capital. Crossing the channel to nineteenth-century Paris, Shteir tracks the rise of the department store and the pathologizing of shoplifting as kleptomania. In 1960s America, shoplifting becomes a symbol of resistance when the publication of Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book popularizes shoplifting as an antiestablishment act. Some contemporary analysts see our current epidemic as a response to a culture of hyper-consumerism; others question whether its upticks can be tied to economic downturns at all. Few provide convincing theories about why it goes up or down. Just as experts can't agree on why people shoplift, they can't agree on how to stop it. Shoplifting has been punished by death, discouraged by shame tactics, and protected against by high-tech surveillance. Shoplifters have been treated by psychoanalysis, medicated with pharmaceuticals, and enforced by law to attend rehabilitation groups. While a few individuals have abandoned their sticky-fingered habits, shoplifting shows no signs of slowing. In The Steal, Shteir guides us through a remarkable tour of all things shoplifting-we visit the Woodbury Commons Outlet Mall, where boosters run rampant, watch the surveillance footage from Winona Ryder's famed shopping trip, and learn the history of antitheft technology. A groundbreaking study, The Steal shows us that shoplifting in its many guises-crime, disease, protest-is best understood as a reflection of our society, ourselves.

Book Fat

    Fat

    Book Details:
  • Author : Christopher E. Forth
  • Publisher : Reaktion Books
  • Release : 2019-06-15
  • ISBN : 178914096X
  • Pages : 359 pages

Download or read book Fat written by Christopher E. Forth and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2019-06-15 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fat: such a little word evokes big responses. While ‘fat’ describes the size and shape of bodies, our negative reactions to corpulent bodies also depend on something tangible and tactile; as this book argues, there is more to fat than meets the eye. Fat: A Cultural History of the Stuff of Life offers a historical reflection on how fat has been perceived and imagined in the West since antiquity. Featuring fascinating historical accounts, philosophical, religious and cultural arguments, including discussions of status, gender and race, the book digs deep into the past for the roots of our current notions and prejudices. Three central themes emerge: how we have perceived and imagined obesity over the centuries; how fat as a substance has elicited disgust and how it evokes perceptions of animality; but also how it has been associated with vitality and fertility. By exploring the complex ways in which fat, fatness and fattening have been perceived over time, this book provides rich insights into the stuff our stereotypes are made of.

Book Theater of Shopping

    Book Details:
  • Author : Alastair Gordon
  • Publisher : Rizzoli Publications
  • Release : 2019-02-19
  • ISBN : 0847862828
  • Pages : 272 pages

Download or read book Theater of Shopping written by Alastair Gordon and published by Rizzoli Publications. This book was released on 2019-02-19 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This lavishly illustrated book celebrates one of the most influential and successful retail centers in the world, from its opening in 1965--when it changed the retail landscape by inviting European designers such as Gucci and Valentino to open stores within a shopping mall--until the present day. Theater of Shopping tells the story of retail visionary Stanley Whitman and the creation of Bal Harbour Shops, the most successful luxury fashion shopping center in the world*, and one of the last family-owned malls in America. Written by critically acclaimed author Alastair Gordon, Theater of Shopping is a cultural history of both a place and a personal legacy. The open-air mall opened in 1965 as a pedestrian-friendly environment that turned shopping into a kind of theatrical event, while featuring the work of young design talents like Valentino, Versace, Mugler, de La Renta, and other foreign designers who were unknown in America before first showcasing their collections at Bal Harbour Shops. The text weaves together fashion, luxury commerce, architecture, landscape design, urban development, and family history, to create a highly readable narrative illustrated with more than 300 images including never-before-published drawings, plans and photographs by renowned photographers including Richard Avedon and Ezra Stoller.

Book Comic Books and American Cultural History

Download or read book Comic Books and American Cultural History written by Matthew Pustz and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-02-23 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A highly original collection of essays, demonstrating how comic books can be used as primary sources in the teaching and understanding of American history.

Book Paris Fashion

    Book Details:
  • Author : Valerie Steele
  • Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
  • Release : 2017-09-21
  • ISBN : 1474245498
  • Pages : 344 pages

Download or read book Paris Fashion written by Valerie Steele and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-09-21 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paris has been the international capital of fashion for more than 300 years. Even before the rise of the haute couture, Parisians were notorious for their obsession with fashion, and foreigners eagerly followed their lead. From Charles Frederick Worth to Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, Christian Dior, and Yves Saint Laurent, fashion history is dominated by the names of Parisian couturiers. But Valerie Steele's Paris Fashion is much more than just a history of great designers. This fascinating book demonstrates that the success of Paris ultimately rests on the strength of its fashion culture – created by a host of fashion performers and spectators, including actresses, dandies, milliners, artists, and writers. First published in 1988 to great international acclaim, this pioneering book has now been completely revised and brought up to date, encompassing the rise of fashion's multiple world cities in the 21st century. Lavishly illustrated, deeply learned, and elegantly written, Valerie Steele's masterwork explores with brilliance and flair why Paris remains the capital of fashion.

Book Point of Purchase

Download or read book Point of Purchase written by Sharon Zukin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-24 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This accessible, smart, and expansive book on shopping's impact on American life is in part historical, stretching back to the mid-19th century, yet also has a contemporary focus, with material on recent trends in shopping from the internet to Zagat's guides. Drawing inspiration from both Pierre Bourdieu's work and Walter Benjamin's seminal essay on the shopping arcades of 19th-century Paris, Zukin explores the forces that have made shopping so central to our lives: the rise of consumer culture, the never-ending quest for better value, and shopping's ability to help us improve our social status and attain new social identities.

Book The Development of Modern Business

Download or read book The Development of Modern Business written by Gordon Boyce and published by Red Globe Press. This book was released on 2002-05-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text charts business development over the last two centuries in the UK, the United States, Japan and Australia. It addresses enduring concerns for entrepreneurs and managers and demonstrates the value of a historical perspective from which to judge present day.

Book Juvenescence

    Book Details:
  • Author : Robert Pogue Harrison
  • Publisher : University of Chicago Press
  • Release : 2014-11-21
  • ISBN : 022617199X
  • Pages : 232 pages

Download or read book Juvenescence written by Robert Pogue Harrison and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-11-21 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How old are we, those of us who belong to the postwar era? By many measures, both evolutionary and cultural, we are older than ever. But we are also getting startlingly youngeryounger in looks, attire, behavior, mentality, desires. We belong, Robert Harrison says, to an age of juvenescence. "Juvenescence "is about the ways in which the spirits of youth and age have coexisted and shaped each other, both in individuals and culture, from the time of antiquity to the present. It is also a book that asks what it means for the future when youth gains the upper hand to the unprecedented degree it has today. Our way of aging, Harrison argues, resembles thethe scientific concept of "neoteny"the retention of immature characteristics into adulthood. We mature, but with a still tenacious youthfulness, driving drives toward innovation rather than reflection, genius rather than wisdom. At its best, human maturity has its source in the youth it brings to fruition. And yet our protracted youth, Harrison suggests, is a luxury that can be supported only by our elders and the institutions they build. Although Harrison believes, echoing Stephen Jay Gould, that our genius as a species lies in our collective reluctance to grow up, he argues that we are today in a phase of radical juvenalization that allows no space for the kind of wisdom that builds upon the past."

Book The New Cultural History

Download or read book The New Cultural History written by Lynn Hunt and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1989-03-07 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Across the humanities and the social sciences, disciplinary boundaries have come into question as scholars have acknowledged their common preoccupations with cultural phenomena ranging from rituals and ceremonies to texts and discourse. Literary critics, for example, have turned to history for a deepening of their notion of cultural products; some of them now read historical documents in the same way that they previously read "great" texts. Anthropologists have turned to the history of their own discipline in order to better understand the ways in which disciplinary authority was constructed. As historians have begun to participate in this ferment, they have moved away from their earlier focus on social theoretical models of historical development toward concepts taken from cultural anthropology and literary criticism. Much of the most exciting work in history recently has been affiliated with this wide-ranging effort to write history that is essentially a history of culture. The essays presented here provide an introduction to this movement within the discipline of history. The essays in Part One trace the influence of important models for the new cultural history, models ranging from the pathbreaking work of the French cultural critic Michel Foucault and the American anthropologist Clifford Geertz to the imaginative efforts of such contemporary historians as Natalie Davis and E. P. Thompson, as well as the more controversial theories of Hayden White and Dominick LaCapra. The essays in Part Two are exemplary of the most challenging and fruitful new work of historians in this genre, with topics as diverse as parades in 19th-century America, 16th-century Spanish texts, English medical writing, and the visual practices implied in Italian Renaissance frescoes. Beneath this diversity, however, it is possible to see the commonalities of the new cultural history as it takes shape. Students, teachers, and general readers interested in the future of history will find these essays stimulating and provocative.