Autorentext

Steve Penfold is a professor of history at the University of Toronto where he specializes in Canadian history.

Klappentext

The Dominion of Shoppers is a concise introduction to the long history of Canadian consumption. Building on the “four Ps” of consumer history – place, product, payment, and power – historian Steve Penfold traces the complex mix of business, economic, social, and cultural dynamics that shaped shopping and exchange from the bygone fur trade to contemporary online buying.

Stretching from the 17th to the 21st century, The Dominion of Shoppers builds its narrative around several key moments in the history of the (now bankrupt) Hudson’s Bay Company, leading the reader through the exchanges of the fur trade, retail in settler colonialism, modern consumption, post-World War Two consumer boom, consumer nationalism, state regulation, and more recent technological and retail disruptions. Through the pages of this book, readers will visit fur trade posts, public markets, small rural shops, department stores, shopping malls, power centres, discount houses, and online markets.

The Dominion of Shoppers is a valuable introduction to Canadian consumerism for historians, students, and anyone interested in Canada’s past and present.

Zusammenfassung
The Dominion of Shoppers is a vivid survey of Canadian consumption over the last four centuries, stretching from the early fur trade to recent online shopping. It examines the business, social, and cultural dynamics of the long history of Canadian consumer practices.

Inhalt

Introduction: Shopping as History
Chapter One: Hats and Empires
Chapter Two: Retail and Re-Settlement
Chapter Three: Shopping in Modernity
Chapter Four: The Age of Booms
Chapter Five: Moral Economies of Shopping
Chapter Six: Patriotic Shopping
Chapter Seven: The Age of Disruption
Conclusion: A Dominion of Shoppers