Point of Purchase

by Sharon Zukin

This accessible, smart, and expansive book on shopping's impact on American life is in part historical, stretching back to the mid-19th century, yet also has a contemporary focus, with material on recent trends in shopping from the internet to Zagat's guides.

Drawing inspiration from both Pierre Bourdieu's work and Walter Benjamin's seminal essay on the shopping arcades of 19th-century Paris, Zukin explores the forces that have made shopping so central to our the rise of consumer culture, the never-ending quest for better value, and shopping's ability to help us improve our social status and attain new social identities.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Sociology, Cultural, Cultural Studies

336 pages, Paperback

First published October 16, 2003

About the author

Sharon L. Zukin (born September 7, 1946) is a professor of sociology who specializes in modern urban life. She teaches at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. As of 2014, she was also a distinguished fellow in the Advanced Research Collaborative at the CUNY Graduate Center and chair of the Consumers and Consumption Section of the American Sociological Association. Zukin was a visiting professor at the University of Amsterdam in 2010–11.

Zukin's research interests and analytical framework place her in the broad category of Neo-Marxist social thinkers. She began teaching urban sociology just as the “new urban sociology” was emerging, partly in response to a series of urban riots (many of which involved African-Americans reacting to police brutality or other manifestations of systemic racism) that took place in U.S. cities in the late 1960s. Widespread urban unrest in the U.S. and Europe prompted worried governments and agencies to increase the funding for urban research. Sociologist Manuel Castells and geographer David Harvey were two of the theorists influential in developing the new urban sociology.

Reviews

[Kristin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good overview, personable and accessible. A lot of familiar territory for me and possibly anyone who works in retail and/or marketing. My biggest criticism is how New York-centric the book is. Zukin does a good job of describing the long-gone department stores of 20th-century Manhattan, who their customers were, what their merchandise and design and location signaled, etc., but it still felt like readers were expected to have some familiarity with them. More photos or period advertising would have helped; these types of urban department stores weren't universal.

Interesting to read about attitudes toward online shopping ca. 2000, what feels now like e-commerce's tipping point into ubiquity. I'd be interested in an updated chapter now that we have an entire generation of young adults who have never shopped in a world without Amazon.

[Emma Sea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very thorough. It doesn't get more stars from me purely because I was already familiar with a lot of the material in here. The chapter on racial profiling in department stores shows how little has changed in the last 10 years. The chapter on shopping online (or lack thereof), and how shoppers don't feel they can purchase until they speak to a 'real person', shows how much has.

In terms of fashion retailing, I suggest Fashioning the Bourgeoisie: A History of Clothing in the Nineteenth Century as a complementary book on the origins of the department store.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

An elegant grounding of the ways in which shopping--buying and possessing--has become inextricably bound up in American culture. The approach is largely sociological in nature, which makes sense, as the most striking aspect of shopping that stuck with me is how woven it is to identity, in every sense. The book tracks the critical shift from shopping for practicality, or as an expression of class status, to shopping for individuality and self-expression. I agree to a certain extent with the other reviewers who suggest that personal experiences woven in, and the more direct ethnography / sociology, are perhaps not the most effective, as those experiences are perhaps not universal enough to make the points, or maybe just overdetailed. Even still, what Zukin makes of them is great analysis, especially on how shopping is felt by people of color and women. As I write this in 2021, the final conclusion of the chapter on the internet is even more prescient: "The flatness of the screen highlights our alienation from goods." And her last point, that shopping itself is not about buying things, is beautifully expressed.

[soph · Rating 4 out of 5]

maybe economic sociology is my true calling bc this book was awesome. thanks dr bowman for the recommendation!!

[Chrissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a solid read, giving me a better insight into the shifting and increasing place shopping has come to have in our culture, particularly in terms of how we are educated to shop by both our peer group and outside marketing. The book became an overview, sparking questions that I will pursue into other books. At times, the writing seemed to be edging more toward memoir--the author focuses on the New York area, where she currently lives and includes snippets of her own experiences. I found that the mix of historical detail, personal examples and comments from other contemporary shoppers pulled me as a reader in many different directions, leaving me unsure to how to interpret what I was reading. Should I have taken some sections as nostalgia backed by research? A specific regional examination of shopping? A good book and a great place to begin an examination of our consumer society.

[Vicki · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very factual. It was an oddly narrow focus on New York City shopping. She had looked into a few stores in New York in detail and had a few good interveiws but she didn't have enough breath of experience to write an in-depth book.