Shopping

Shopping can be understood as a very public manifestation of global capitalism and modern consumer culture. If consumption is to be understood broadly as the selection, purchase, use, maintenance and disposal of goods and services, shopping can be understood as a distinctive form in which the focus is on pleasure, leisure, and choice. Shopping emerges in a monetary economy in which the institutions and spaces exist for truly global systems of production and distribution to intersect with the individual consumer. Although shopping is synonymous with the high levels of consumption in modern societies, it is a mistake to think of it simply as consumption for the masses. Rather, it is more useful to think of shopping in terms of the high levels of individual consumption ...