Devrim Umut Aslan
Teaching staff
Modes of Shopping Constituting a Local Street: A video-ethnography of shopping as a practice
Author
Summary, in English
In the last decades spatiotemporal manifestations of shopping are changed radically in conjunction with proliferation of car usage, internationalization of retail, and establishment of out-of-town malls. The social, cultural, and economic backgrounds of this axis alteration and its implication to the city life have been discussed thoroughly. However, the main empirical focus laid mostly on the mainstream and spectacular geographies of shopping. There is little literature on how shopping is enacted in “other” shopping geographies, particularly on local shopping streets.
Södergatan, established as the main street of a working-class district in Helsingborg, Sweden, after going through modernization phases, today it mostly hosts so-called migrant entrepreneurships, service-based premises, and grocery stores. This study examines the major modes of shopping on this local shopping street in order to understand how shopping geographies outside of mainstream ensure their relevance. It contributes to the literature on shopping geographies from a cultural perspective, particularly on the co-constitutive interrelation between enactments of shopping and arrangements of shopping places. While doing this, the study engages in “practice theory”, which supplies a profound conceptual vocabulary and dynamic epistemological gaze for concentrating on shopping as the main analytical unit. The major method employed in the research is video-ethnography, due to its capability to synchronically appreciate enactments of shopping, shoppers’ reflections, the sensory and material environment of the street, and the movement within.
The research shows that there are some major place-specific modes of shopping that are enacted in the street and in the district, and these modes of shopping, bundling with each other, materially and sensorially co-constitute the street into a meaningful, integral and convivial part of the city.
Södergatan, established as the main street of a working-class district in Helsingborg, Sweden, after going through modernization phases, today it mostly hosts so-called migrant entrepreneurships, service-based premises, and grocery stores. This study examines the major modes of shopping on this local shopping street in order to understand how shopping geographies outside of mainstream ensure their relevance. It contributes to the literature on shopping geographies from a cultural perspective, particularly on the co-constitutive interrelation between enactments of shopping and arrangements of shopping places. While doing this, the study engages in “practice theory”, which supplies a profound conceptual vocabulary and dynamic epistemological gaze for concentrating on shopping as the main analytical unit. The major method employed in the research is video-ethnography, due to its capability to synchronically appreciate enactments of shopping, shoppers’ reflections, the sensory and material environment of the street, and the movement within.
The research shows that there are some major place-specific modes of shopping that are enacted in the street and in the district, and these modes of shopping, bundling with each other, materially and sensorially co-constitute the street into a meaningful, integral and convivial part of the city.
Department/s
- Department of Service Studies
- Division of Fashion Studies
Publishing year
2019
Language
English
Links
Document type
Conference paper: abstract
Topic
- Social Sciences Interdisciplinary
Keywords
- Shopping
- Shopping street
- Practice theory
- Video ethnography
Conference name
ESA 14th Conference of the <br/>European Sociological Association
Conference date
2019-08-20 - 2019-08-23
Conference place
Manchester, United Kingdom
Status
Published
Project
- Praxitopia: How shopping makes a street vibrant