Tim Cooper, University of St Andrews
Shopping and waste
E-mail: tc30@st-andrews.ac.uk

Consumerism has become one of the key themes in contemporary historical research. Much of the focus of this research has been on the act of shopping. But shopping is not the only part of a process that stretches from production to disposal, the final destination for all the goods that we buy is the waste bin and the rubbish heap. This paper investigates the relationship between shopping, shoppers and waste. It looks at how shopping has produced different amounts and types of waste over time, and how the consciousness of waste and of the necessity of disposal has affected the practice of shopping. In particular it looks at the historical development of the supermarket, of packaging, and the growth of waste in the twentieth century, and the relationship these have had with the environmental consciousness of the shopper.

The image of a woman with a basket is often associated with the Women's Co-operative Guild (WCG).  As an auxiliary of the Co-operative movement, this working-class women's organisation had always had strong links to retailing.  Most commonly, WCG members have been presented as thrifty consumers of food and domestic products.  This paper, however, will challenge this rather narrow image by exploring the WCG's wider relationship to shopping and purchasing during the post-war austerity years.  Focusing on their encouragement of fashion and beauty consumption in their Woman's Outlook magazine, it will show that the Guild viewed shopping as an area of expertise for members.  It will highlight the complexity of their position, most notably with the continuation of thriftiness, suggesting that consumption should be understood as a fluid concept.  Arguing that the WCG can illuminate a broader picture of women's relationship to shopping, it will demonstrate that by the 1950s, Guild members had swapped their baskets for handbags.

Much of the recent literature on consumption in eighteenth- and early-nineteenth century Britain focuses on the motivations to consume and the links between consumption and social, cultural or gender identity. From the work of Amanda Vickery, Woodruff Smith and others, we have a good picture of the goods that people were consuming and how they viewed and valued these items. However, we know rather less about the actual processes whereby goods were acquired: the moments of consumption that took place in shops. Helen Berry has written about the development of polite shopping, but much of the growing literature on retailing – from the Muis to Nancy Cox – has focused on the shop and the shopkeeper, rather than the shopper. Thus our analyses of eighteenth-century shops often leave them curiously depopulated. This is partly a result of the lack of useful sources. Few shoppers have left us with accounts of what goods they were buying, or how and why they were buying them. Those that did – in diaries, letters or novels – are exceptional and it is difficult to judge how typical their records may have been of general shopping habits. The picture these sources paint is now well established. Wealthy elites (especially women) increasingly engaging in practices of browsing and window shopping. They viewed shopping as a leisure activity as much as an economic necessity: the process was as important as the outcome. In contrast, the poorer sections of society (and, more arguably, men in general) remained outside this ‘modern’ mode of consumption and continued to purchase goods on the basis of need. They visited shops only when they needed specific items.
In this paper, we seek to modify this rather simplistic social-gender analysis by repopulating eighteenth-century shops with their full range of customers. To do this, we draw on a number of account books from shopkeepers in the English Midlands. By reconstructing the purchasing patterns of the hundreds of customers appearing in these documents, we learn more about the nature of shopping habits of ordinary people. Our analysis involves recreating the ebb and flow of customers through the year, and tracing the shopping habits of individual customers over the days, weeks and months. The picture of shopping that this provides suggests that modes of shopping and motivations for buying goods were effected by numerous variables (including social status and gender), but not always in the ways that we might expect. It is apparent that some people actively shopped even for mundane items; others bought more routinely, and others again bought goods remotely – rarely, if ever visiting the shop in person, yet still making active choices about consumer goods. All this serves to complicate our image of shopping in the eighteenth century, highlighting this as a period of transition leading towards the mass consumption and ‘shopping for pleasure’ that characterised nineteenth-century society.

This paper examines the early development of specialized retail shops in early modern London. Through an examination of artefacts, inventories and images, it argues that apothecaries’ shops were sites of innovative shop design and display. These practices are related to general attitudes to consumption and the problematic nature of the medical commodities they sold, particularly the concerns contemporaries had over apothecaries’ reliability, trustworthiness and honesty. The paper further argues that analyses of the rise of the shop need to be revised to incorporate early developments by producer-retailers, such as apothecaries and goldsmiths, and suggests that worries about commodities were more important than enticement in driving investments in retailing.
 

The workshop will be held at the University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton city campus, Millennium City Building. Registration and lunch will take place in room MC413, the workshop and coffee in room MC 125.
The building is situated in Wolverhampton’s city centre, and is readily accessible by road and by public transport. The railway and bus stations are only five/ten minutes’ walk away (Maps and further information will be sent out c. 2 weeks before the event).
More general information about Wolverhampton, including maps and details of local accommodation can be found on-line, via the Wolverhampton Tourist Information Centre. Tel: 01902 556110 Fax: 01902 556111
E-mail: wolverhampton.tic@dial.pipex.com
The web address is:
http://www.wolverhampton.tic.dial.pipex.com/tic/home.shtml

THE WORKSHOP FEE IS £ 9. Please make cheques payable to 'the University of Wolverhampton' and send with a completed registration form to the address below.