Transcript Shopping - thebookof25

SOCI 2070
Shopping
Today’s Class
1.
2.
3.
Shopping and Power
Revolutionizing the Means of
Consumption
Towards a Sociology of Shopping
Today’s Readings
Required
 Anne Kingston, The Edible Man: Dave Nichol,
President’s Choice, and the Making of Popular Taste,
pp. 51-66.
 Deborah Barndt, Tangled Routes: Women, Work,
and Globalization on the Tomato Trail, 113-127.
 Naomi Klein, No Logo, xiii-26; 439-446.
 Leanne Delap, ‘Fear, Froth and Sincerity: Where Do
We Go From Here?’
 Sophie Kinsella, Confessions of a Shopaholic, pp. 511.
Supplementary
 George Ritzer, Enchanting a Disenchanting World,
Ch. 1, Ch. 4 (On Reserve)
The Means of Consumption

We are “consumed
with consumption”
Ritzer
Spaces
 Shopping malls
 Superstores
 Tourist sites (Disney)
 Public institutions (York
Lanes)
Technologies
 Electronic retailers
 Home shopping network
Cathedrals of Consumption

“What was worshipped
in these contemporary
cathedrals…was not an
absolute moral order
but something much
more mundane: people
were ‘worshipping
shopping’ and through
it…the private
authorities, the order
and corporate power
their worship makes
possible”
Shearing and Stenning, p. 323

Sacred?
Or at least…



Spectacular
Extraordinary
Providing a ‘holistic’
shopping experience
McDonaldized Shopping
1. The Efficiency of a
Mall
 All shops in one
location
 One stop shopping
 A large pool of
customers
 Promotion of a
shopping culture
2. Calculability
 Price Club, Sam’s
Club
 Large stores with large
piles of goods in large
sizes
 Bigger is cheaper and
better:
 Supersize my
groceries
McDonaldized Shopping
3. Predictability


Gap khakis: The Big
Mac of pants
Gap, Banana
Republic, Old Navy:
The same from
Yorkdale to West
Edmonton Mall to 8th &
Broadway (NYC)
4. Control & Technology

Stores designed to
maximize the exposure to
products (IKEA)

Computer technology to
regulate inventory & collect
customer data

Surveillance technology to
monitor shoppers’ behavior

“The supermarket
shopper is one of the
most closely observed
species alive”
Kingston, Reading Kit, 458
McDonaldized Shopping

The Shopper is McDonalidized

Performs tasks formerly performed by
workers
 Bag

your own groceries
Supervises workers
 The
‘goldfish bowl’
5th Element:
Irrationality of Rationality
Big Boxes and suburban sprawl
 Driving out small businesses
 Substitution of consumerism for
meaningful activities
 The extraordinary becomes mundane

The Class System:
Wage Labour





Labour Competitiveness in the service
economy
Replacement of full-time with part-time labour
Pressure for wage freezes and/or rollbacks
Computerization and competitiveness lead to
job loss, and/or workplace reorganization
Work intensification and management control
The Class System:
Corporate Power

Wal-Mart: annual sales that surpass the GDP
of over 160 countries
Supermarkets in Canada
 Seven chains control 70% of the food retail
market
 Loblaws Companies Ltd. is dominant,
controlling over 30%
Commodity Fetishism

“…the habit of perceiving an object’s
price as something intrinsic to and fixed
within that object, something emanating
directly and vitally from that object’s
core, rather than as the end result of a
history of people and their labour”
Leah Hagar Cohen, Reading Kit, p. 306
Branding as Commodity
Fetishism


Create a core meaning/identity that transcends the
product itself
Attach ‘value’ to the brand/identity
Branding as Commodity
Fetishism

Purchase the lifestyle, set of values, attitude of the brand
Branding as Commodity
Fetishism

There is labour
behind the label