FREE: Carried Away: The Invention of Modern Shopping, by Rachel Bowlby

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Hardcover, Like New condition
From Publishers Weekly
"Consumption is at once ecstasy and waste," writes cultural critic Bowlby (Shopping with Freud) at the outset of this engrossing history of postindustrial consumerism. She charts the century-old history of the lure of shopping through advertisements, professional literature (e.g., the trade journal Shelf Appeal), the constant re-imagining of the display window and of packaging, and literature (including Sister Carrie, Virginia Woolf's Orlando, Balzac's Lost Illusions and The Stepford Wives). Arguing that the modern concept of shopping (as opposed to buying necessities) is a product of the desire of a rising middle class to indicate social status with luxury items, Bowlby locates shopping at the center of modern life, citing a number of diverse and ubiquitous venues. She traces the history of the supermarket in the 1930s, analyzes the rise of Piggly Wiggly in the American South, charts the use of "pretty girls" in advertising and discusses a 1930s social theory holding that women, as purchasers, were responsible for the quality of goods sold. In an easy and engaging style, Bowlby (who teaches English, French and American studies at the University of York, U.K.) moves fluidly from quoting Alexander Pope to explicating the different sales tactics of early French and U.S. self-service markets. This deft mixture of sociology, cultural criticism and literary scholarship is an important contribution to feminist and cultural studies.