Retail and the Artifice of Social Change
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Book Description
In Retail and Social Change Steven Miles, presents a cross-disciplinary analysis of the evolution of retail and how in both its material and virtual guises it has come to reframe our relationship with the social world. Retail has become increasingly influential in homogenising the urban experience. And yet in reacting to trends in virtual consumption retailers are also becoming more and more conscious of the need to engage with consumers in more sophisticated ways. Retail and Social Change will interest students and scholars in geography, cultural studies, sociology, marketing and business studies interested in how and why retail pervades both our physical and emotional lives in increasingly unexpected ways. It will provide a lively, comparative and thought-provoking contribution that interrogates the implications of retail change, for what it means to be a citizen of a consumer society in the twenty-first century.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction 2. The Individualised Consumer 3. Shopping for Identity 4. Whatever Happened to the City? 5. The Supermarket 6. Out-of-Town Retail 7. Experiential Retail 8. Tourism and Authenticity 9. Retail Online 10. Conclusion: The Artifice of Social Change
Author(s)
Biography
Steven Miles is Professor of Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is the author of Consumerism as a Way of Life (1998, Sage), Youth Lifestyles in a Changing World (2000) (OUP), Social Theory in the Real World (2002, Sage) and, Spaces for Consumption: Pleasure and Placelessness in the Post-Industrial City (2010, Sage). Steven is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Consumer Culture.