The Globetrotting Shopaholic: Consumer Spaces, Products, and their Cultural Places

The thrust of the literature on consumer space and society focuses on product labeling, marketing techniques and approaches to branding, as well as how mass consumer culture has reshaped individuals' interaction with needs and desires. Globetrotting Shopoholics departs from this current discourse by examining both consumption venues and the cultural, political and social reasons why we consume. It elucidates international trends in consumption politics, and how they impact the creation of consumer spaces, which, in this book, takes the form of numerous global loci including Canada's West Edmonton Mall, Japanese theme parks, shopping venues in the Philippines, and expat boutiques in Budapest. Using a wide range of epistemological frameworks including cultural ethnography, historical analysis, literary theory, sociological dissection, anthropological examination, and philosophical ruminations, this collection conveys how material objects and lifestyles are accumulated and represented internationally, and how consumer goods and spaces define who we are as human beings.