Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Introduction
• In Defence of Shopping
• Could Shopping Ever Really Matter?
• Modernity's Disavowal
• Women, the City and the Department Store
• Supermarket Futures
• The Making of a Swedish Department Store Culture
• Shopping in the East Centre Mall
• Shopping, Pleasure and the Sex War
• The Scopic Regimes of Shopping
• Appendix: Research on Shopping
• A Brief History and Selected Literature