Shortcuts
Please wait while page loads.

Research Library catalogue

Back to Research Library home


PageMenu- Main Menu-
Page content

Catalogue Display

A theory of shopping / Daniel Miller.

A theory of shopping / Daniel Miller.
Catalogue Information
Field name Details
ISBN 0801435552 (cloth : alk. paper)
0801485517 (pbk. : alk. paper)
0745619452 (Polity)
0745619460 (Polity : pbk.)
Author Miller, Daniel, 1954- (author)
Title A theory of shopping / Daniel Miller.
Publisher and/or associated date/s Polity Press, 1998.
Description ix, 180 pages ; 23 cm.
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (p. [170]-175) and index.
Contents Making love in supermarkets -- Shopping as sacrifice -- Subjects and objects of devotion.
Summary This book is about shopping for ordinary things. It is also about love and devotion manifest within families and about the nature of sacrificial ritual. Daniel Miller approaches shopping not as an end in itself but as a means to discover what people's practices, closely observed, reveal about their relationships.
The ethnographic sections of the book are based on a year's study of shopping on a street in North London. This provides the basis for a description of how shoppers develop and imagine the social relationships most important to them through the medium of selecting goods. Among the characteristics of these shopping expeditions are the concept of "the treat," and the centrality of thrift. Miller juxtaposes to his account of shopping various theories that anthropologists have brought to bear on the ritual of sacrifice, including that of the French philosopher Georges Bataille. He then integrates these elements to postulate his theory of shopping as sacrifice in terms as original and utterly engaging as the stories he tells of individual shoppers.
Subjects Marketing -- Social aspects -- England
Shopping -- Social aspects -- England
Consumer behavior -- England
Households -- England
Call number 2022.046
Catalogue Information 100082088 Beginning of record . Catalogue Information 100082088 Top of page .
Item Information
Barcode Shelf Location Collection Volume Ref. Status Due Date
A00953958 2022.046
General Collection   . Available to Museum Staff .  
. Catalogue Record 100082088 ItemInfo Beginning of record . Catalogue Record 100082088 ItemInfo Top of page .