Studying at York
Shopping - HIS00127H
- Department: History
- Credit value: 20 credits
- Credit level: H
- Academic year of delivery: 2024-25
Module summary
Shopping is amongst the most everyday and mundane and at the same time eternal and global of human activities. This course will range from the earliest forms of shopping through Emile Zola’s Au Bonheur des dames (the basis for BBC TV’s The Paradise) to the UK riots of 2011. The focus will be the recurring debates – ethical as much as economic - shopping has provoked around the world in the twentieth century, but it will ask what (if anything) was distinctive about modern shopping. As mass culture, was shopping more important to modern identity; did it liberate popular expression or extend commercial power; and how did the relationship change between retailer and shoppers? Most modern debates about shopping have their origins in the USA, the “consumer’s republic”, where shopping is regarded as a right of citizenship. No less, Britain has been seen by figures as diverse as Napoleon, Adam Smith and Margaret Thatcher as a “nation of shopkeepers”. Historians have tended to focus on its more dramatic forms, on the commodities acquired or on the politics of consumerism. This course also aims at a more shopfloor history and to examine how cultures of shopping permeate modern history and identities - from its language, the practice of self-service, to its major institutions. It does this by both looking transnationally, and by utilizing multi-disciplinary sources from literature, anthropology and sociology as well as history.
Module will run
| Occurrence | Teaching period |
|---|---|
| A | Semester 1 2024-25 |
Module aims
The aims of this module are:
- To introduce students to the practice of comparative history;
- To enable students to acquire skills and understanding of that practice by studying a particular topic or theme; and
- To enable students to reflect on the possibilities and difficulties involved in comparative history
Module learning outcomes
Students who complete this module successfully will:
- Grasp the key approaches and challenges involved in comparative history;
- Understand a range of aspects of the topic or theme which they have studied;
- Be able to use and evaluate comparative approaches to that topic or theme; and
- Have learned to discuss and write about comparative history
Module content
Students will attend a 1-hour briefing in week 1, then a 1-hour plenary/lecture and a 2-hour seminar in each of weeks 2-4, 6-8 and 10-11 of the semester. Weeks 5 & 9 are Reading and Writing Weeks (RAW). Students prepare for and participate in eight 1-hour plenaries/lectures and eight 2-hour seminars in all.
Seminar topics are subject to variation, but are likely to include the following:
- Modern and ancient: shoppers, the marketplace and historians
- Critics, or is shopping bad for you? Too much, too little, the pitfalls of choice, luxury & necessity.
- Advocates, or retail therapy: catalogues, windows, internet… shopping for pleasure, wants not needs.
- The impact of self-service and the Supermarket; Shopping as cold war ideology / Americanization
- The voice of the Consumer? Organizations, politics, regulation.
- Big retailers – department stores, chain stores, supermarkets, Malls
- On the shopfloor, High Street, Main street: gender, crime, opening hours, counter-cultures.
- Madmen? The influence of advertising
Indicative assessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Open Examination: Multiple choice questions online | 100 |
Special assessment rules
None
Additional assessment information
For formative assessment work, students will produce an essay plan relating to the themes and issues of the module.
For summative assessment students will complete an Open Exam in the assessment period.
Indicative reassessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Open Examination: Multiple choice questions online | 100 |
Module feedback
Following their formative assessment task, students will receive written feedback, which may be supplemented by the tutor giving some oral feedback to the whole group. All students are encouraged, if they wish, to discuss their feedback during their tutor’s student hours. For more information, see the Statement on Feedback.
For the summative assessment task, students will receive their provisional mark and written feedback within 25 working days of the submission. For semester 1 assessments, the tutor will be available during student hours of the following semester for follow-up guidance if required. For more information, see the Statement of Assessment.
Indicative reading
For semester time reading, please refer to the module VLE site. Before the course starts, we encourage you to look at the following items of preliminary reading:
- Rachel Bowlby, Carried Away: The Invention of Modern Shopping (London: Faber & Faber, 2000).
- Victoria de Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America’s advance through 20th century Europe (Cambridge, Mass: HUP, 2005).
- Daniel Miller, A Theory of Shopping (Cambridge: Polity, 1998).