1st Edition

Reading Retail A Geographical Perspective on Retailing and Consumption Spaces

By Neil Wrigley, Michelle Lowe Copyright 2002

    Reading Retail captures contemporary debates on the geography of retailing and consumption spaces. It is constructed around a series of 'readings' from key works, and is designed to encourage readers to develop a sense of engagement with the rapidly evolving debates in this field. More than 60 edited readings are integrated into the text, providing a guided route map through the literature and into the study of the geographies of retailing and consumption. The volume also introduces readers to the exciting and interdisciplinary developments unfolding in the 'new retail geography', drawing on up-to-the-minute research material from areas ranging from anthropology to business studies, and tackling issues as diverse as retail internationalization and e-commerce.



    Reading Retail is unique in bringing together a huge range of perspectives on retailing and consumption spaces and will provide a key source text for students in this field.

    Part 1 Introduction. Reading Retail: purpose and organization of the book
    Part 2 Setting the scene: retail dynamics. Reconfiguration of corporate structures in retailing
    Reconfiguration of retailer-supply chain interfaces
    Organizational and technological transformations in retail distribution
    Changing retail employment relations
    Retail regulation and governance
    Part 3 Making and re-making the geographies of retail capital. The inconstant geography and spatial switching of retail capital 1: urban issues
    The inconstant geography and spatial switching of retail capital 2: regional issues and internationalization
    The configuration, manipulation and contestation of retail space
    Part 4 Consumption places and spaces. The street
    The store
    The mall
    The home. Indexes

    Biography

    Neil Wrigley, Michelle Lowe

    More than any other textbook in retailing it encourages readers to obtain and confront the literature. The is an engagaing, somewhat unconventional text ... it contains within it the sense of interest and excitement too often lost in conventional textbooks ... I expect it to become the key text on the subject in geography.
    Urban Studies, Volume 40, page 861

    Hopefully the book will excite more scholars to become interested in the field and, as a result, produce a stronger and more inclusive retail geography than has existed previously.
    Professional Geographer

    Reading Retail is absolutely recommended for those who want to enter the fascinating multicoloured world of retail geography.
    European Spatial Research and Policy

    ...quite simply, a stunningly accessible undergraduate text which seems destined to be the core text for many geography courses. If retail educators wish to expose their students to a vast range of interesting and important topics and to do so in a lively and accessible way then this would be the ideal text. It deserves to be found, and surely soon will be, on many an academic bookshelf.
    Tjidschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie

    Provides a stimulating and succinct text for students and researchers to begin reading the debates associated with the new retail geography.
    Progress in Human Geography

    This is a jam-packed book, full of ideas, data, and thought provoking perspectives on everything you want to know about retail geography (and more)... this book is about more than retailing - it resonates with broader questions in geography, planning, sociology, and cultural studies about the character of the contemporary economy.'
    Environment and Planning A