Multiple Meanings: Shopping and the Cultural Politics of Identity

Many studies of contemporary consumption have tended to reduce a complex and contested process to a momentary and isolated act of purchase. A similar kind of reduction is common in many semiotic analyses of shopping malls and in studies of advertising which assume an audience's readings rather than investigating them empirically. Drawing on field research in north London, we provide evidence from focus group discussions of the social use of shopping centres and of the multiple meanings of such apparently mundane activities for the consumers themselves. Five themes are highlighted concerning skill, style, and shopping; shopping as a source of pleasure and anxiety; shopping as a socially situated activity; consumers as knowing, active subjects; and shopping as a highly and complexly gendered activity. These themes illustrate that the consumption process condenses many aspects of our contemporary identities including the dynamics of class and ethnicity, gender and generation, and the cultural politics of space and place.