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Palgrave Macmillan

Shopping and the Senses, 1800-1970

A Sensory History of Retail and Consumption

  • Book
  • © 2022

Overview

Editors:
  1. Serena Dyer

    1. De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

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  • Provides the first collection to look at the sensory nature of consumption and retail

  • Offers nuanced reimaginings of how shops functioned as cultural, social and political spaces

  • Connects histories of shopping, retail, and consumption with histories of the body and the emotions

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Table of contents (10 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xi
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  2. Introduction

    • Serena Dyer
    Pages 1-16

  3. “To Rub the Nose in the Tea”: Smell, Taste, and the Assessment of Quality in Early Nineteenth-Century Tea Retail

    • Matthew Mauger
    Pages 17-34

  4. An Assault on the Senses: Cultural Representations of the Victorian Village Shop

    • Lucy A. Bailey
    Pages 35-58

  5. The Politics of Sitting Down: Women, Cafés and Public Toilets in Dublin

    • Stephanie Rains
    Pages 59-77

  6. Comfort and Safety: An Intersensorial History of Shopping Streets in Nineteenth-Century Amsterdam and Brussels

    • Anneleen Arnout
    Pages 79-100

  7. The Cry of Silk: Erotomania and Fetishism in Au Bonheur des Dames

    • Wendy Ligon Smith
    Pages 101-119

  8. “Behind the Scenes of a Retail Shop”: Sensory Experiences of Living-In, c. 1880s–1920s

    • Alison Moulds
    Pages 121-143

  9. Synergy and Dissonance of the Senses: Negotiating Fashion Through Second-Hand Dealing, Jumble Sales and Street Market Trading in 1930s East End London

    • Cheryl Roberts
    Pages 145-168

  10. “A Seductive Weapon … a Necessary Luxury”: Shopping for ‘Designer Perfume’ During the Interwar Period

    • Lucy Moyse Ferreira
    Pages 169-189

  11. Be My Baby: Sensory Difference and Youth Identity in British Fashion Retail, 1945–1970

    • Bethan Bide
    Pages 191-211

  12. Back Matter

    Pages 213-216
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Keywords

About this book

This book demonstrates the primacy of touch, smell, taste, sight and sound within the retail landscape. It shows that histories of the senses, body, and emotions were inextricably intertwined with processes and practices of retail and consumption. Shops are sensory feasts. From the rustle of silk to the tempting aroma of coffee, the multi-sensory appeal of goods has long been at the heart of how we shop. This book delves into and beyond this seductive idyl of consumer sensuality. Shopping was a sensory activity for consumers and retailers alike, but this experience was not always positive. This book is inhabited by tired feet and weary workers, as well as eager shoppers. It considers embodied sensory experiences and practices, and it represents both a celebration and interrogation of the integration of sensory histories into the study of retail and consumption. Crucially, this book places breathing, feeling human bodies back into the retail space.

Editors and Affiliations

  • De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

    Serena Dyer

About the editor

Serena Dyer is Lecturer in History and Material Culture at De Montfort University, UK.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Shopping and the Senses, 1800-1970

  • Book Subtitle: A Sensory History of Retail and Consumption

  • Editors: Serena Dyer

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90335-0

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: History, History (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-90334-3Published: 13 March 2022

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-90337-4Published: 13 March 2023

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-90335-0Published: 12 March 2022

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XI, 216

  • Number of Illustrations: 9 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Social History, Cultural History, European History

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