Going Shopping: Consumer Choices and Community Consequences

By Ann Satterthwaite

We are how we shop. From Mesopotamian merchants and the fairs of medieval Europe to marble palace department stores and now Wal-Mart and the Internet, social, cultural, economic, and moral forces have shaped our shopping. In this engaging and generously illustrated book, Ann Satterthwaite traces the history of shopping and considers its meaning and significance.

According to Satterthwaite, shopping has become part of the American dream. To choose and to buy constitute not only a basic economic liberty but also the capacity to improve and transform ourselves. How we shop also reflects our culture, as in the twentieth century disposable incomes have grown, women's roles have changed, and new styles of shopping and advertising have made their impacts on an old adventure. But there is a downside. Shopping used to be a friendly business: shoppers and clerks knew each other, the country crossroads stores and downtown markets were social as much as economic hubs. Shopping was meshed with civic life--post offices, town halls, courts, and churches. In place of this almost vanished scene have come superstores and the franchises of international companies staffed by pressured clerks in featureless commercial wastelands. Shopping and community have been savagely divorced.

However, shopping as a social plus need not be lost, says Satterthwaite. Examining trends in the United States and abroad where new approaches to an old activity are strengthening its social and civic role, she states that shopping is more than ever a public concern with profound public impacts.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300084218
• ISBN13: 9780300084214
• Release Date: October 2001
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 2.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.5" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Shopping and the Public

This is a very well- written, extremely informative and thoughtful book useful to planners and anyone interested in understanding and influencing the way in which places to shop are developed. The breadth of the book, which includes a survey of shopping through the hstory as well as an examination of modern shopping via the interent, puts the act of shopping into context by exploring the relationship between community and shopping. Is it possible for the public and local government to mold and shape where and how shopping occurs without drastically impeding the ability of retailers and other providers to sell their products? Is the modern way of shopping destructive to the structure of community? These are questions that planners and communities must address. Reading this book will place the elements of the debate into perspective.