A Theory of Shopping

A Theory of Shopping offers a highly original perspective onone of our most basic everyday activities - shopping. We commonlyassume that shopping is primarily concerned with individuals andmaterialism. But Miller rejects this assumption and follows thesurprising route of analysing shopping by means of an analogy withanthropological studies of sacrificial ritual. He argues that theact of purchasing goods is almost always linked to other socialrelations, and most especially those based on love and care. The ethnographic sections of the book are based on a year'sstudy of shopping on a street in North London. This provides thebasis for a sensitive description of the issues the shopperconfronts when making decisions as to what to buy. Miller developsa theory to account for these observations, arguing that shoppingtypically consists of three major stages which reflect the threekey stages of many rites of sacrifice. In both shopping andsacrifice the ultimate intention is to constitute others asdesiring subjects. Finally the book examines certain historicalshifts in both subjects and objects of devotion, in particular,ideals of gender and love. This treatment of shopping from the perspective of comparativeanthropology represents a highly innovative approach to one of themost familiar tasks of our daily lives. Written in a clear andaccessible manner, this book will be of interest to students andacademics in anthropology, sociology and cultural studies, as wellas anybody who wants to consider more deeply the nature of theirown everyday activities.