T. C. Power & Bro.: The Rise of a Small Western Department Store, 1870–1902

1992 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 671-722 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry C. Klassen
Keyword(s):  
American West ◽  
Department Store ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Consumer Society ◽  
Department Stores ◽  
The West ◽  
Mass Market ◽  
Small Family ◽  
History Of ◽  
Small Department

When studying retailing and its role in developing the American mass market, historians traditionally have focused their attention on large department stores. An analysis of the influence of small department stores in the growth of underdeveloped sections of the American West provides a different emphasis. The following article traces the history of T. C. Power & Bro.—a small, family-run department store in Montana—before the early 1900s. The article demonstrates that the firm's service was tailored to the economic and social needs of urban and rural settlers on the western frontier, helping to create a consumer society in the West.

Introduction: American Wests

2014 ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Stephen Aron
Keyword(s):  
American West ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

‘Introduction: American Wests’ shows that the confusion of legend and fact, of myth and history, makes it hard to disentangle the stories we have told about the development of the American West from our understanding of what really happened. This VSI explains how the gap between projections and reality has shaped the development of the West and confounded our interpretations of its history. This history of the American West expands the chronology, enlarges the geography, complicates the casting, and pluralizes the subject to show that across the centuries, the movements of peoples and the minglings of cultures have shaped the history of sharp confrontations and murky convergences.

London's West End

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rohan McWilliam
Keyword(s):  
Sex Industry ◽  
Department Stores ◽  
The West ◽  
Street Life ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Dion Boucicault ◽  
The World ◽  
Oxford Street ◽  
History Of ◽  
Opera Houses

How did the West End of London become the world’s leading pleasure district? What is the source of its magnetic appeal? How did the centre of London become Theatreland? London’s West End is the first ever history of the area which has enthralled millions. From the Strand up to Oxford Street, the West End came to stand for sensation and vulgarity but also the promotion of high culture. The reader will explore the growth of theatres, opera houses, galleries, restaurants, department stores, casinos, exhibition centres, night clubs, street life, and the sex industry. The West End produced shows and fashions whose impact rippled outwards around the globe. During the nineteenth century, a neighbourhood that serviced the needs of the aristocracy was opened up to a wider public whilst retaining the imprint of luxury and prestige. The book tells the story of the great artists, actors, and entrepreneurs who made the West End: figures such as Gilbert and Sullivan, the playwright Dion Boucicault, the music hall artiste Jenny Hill, and the American retail genius Harry Gordon Selfridge who wanted to create the best shop in the world. We encounter the origins of the modern star system and celebrity culture. The book moves from the creation of Regent Street to the glory days of the Edwardian period when the West End was the heart of empire and the entertainment industry..

scholarly journals Re-Mystifying the West: Hybridity and Spirituality in Jim Jarmusch’s 'Dead Man'

Linguaculture ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-68
Author(s):  
Florina Năstase
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
American West ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Spiritual Awakening ◽  
The West ◽  
American Imperialism ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Native American Identity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dead Man

The paper intends to examine the ways in which the American West has undergone a cinematic transformation with the advent of counter-cultural western movies that criticize and often dismantle American imperialism and expansionism. The paper makes the argument that the American West has arrived at a new stage in its mythology, namely that it has been re-mythologized as a locus of Eastern spiritual awakening. The western of the 1990s’ decade embraces a rebirth of spiritualism through the genre of the “acid western,” typified in this paper by Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995), a film that showcases the return of the West as a cultural frontier that must be re-assimilated instead of rejected. Given its symbolic title, Dead Man is not so much a Western as it is an Eastern romance, a rite of passage framed as a journey towards death. The paper will attempt to make its case by tackling the history of anti-establishment cinema, while also basing its argument on the assertions of director Jim Jarmusch, and various film critics who discuss the issue of the “acid western.” At the same time, the paper will offer a post-colonial perspective informed by Homi Bhabha’s theory of hybridity, with particular emphasis on Native American identity.

Geographical space, social space, and the realm of the department store

Urban History ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeanne Catherine Lawrence
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Department Store ◽  
Consumer Society ◽  
Department Stores ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Shopping Experience ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
Urban Topography ◽  
Urban Institution

Over the past decade a number of scholars have examined the rise of the mass production and distribution of goods, and the concurrent emergence of a nineteenth- and twentieth-century consumer society or ‘culture of consumption’. This body of work has featured the department store prominently in several roles: as a venue for the distribution of consumer goods; as a material fantasyland in which women were encouraged to play out their dreams of conspicuous consumption; and as a place of white-collar employment for working-class clerks. Whatever their focus, these accounts generally view all department stores as homogeneous middle-class institutions, located in a similarly consistent ‘downtown’ in any (and all) large American and European cities. There are serious flaws in such a portrayal. Very real distinctions between department stores in a given city and the social implications of these differences in terms of social status and class are not addressed. Further, the contribution of the built environment and urban topography to the shaping of these status and class distinctions and, ultimately, women's shopping experience, is likewise overlooked. This article examines a set of surveys and marketing reports prepared in 1932 for the Higbee Company of Cleveland, Ohio, in order to situate more precisely one department store within its urban context. These sources document the relationship of the Higbee Company to the city's other department stores and in so doing reveal some of the ways in which stratification between and among classes was interpreted in terms of geographical and social space. Examination of the hierarchy of stores that existed in what was at the time the nation's sixth largest city provides a corrective to the image of the department store as a homogeneous democratic phenomenon, and thus provides an invaluable basis for a reinterpretation of the department store as an urban institution in early twentieth- century America.

Conquered Landscape in the American West

Linguaculture ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Irina Chirica
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
American West ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Western Expansion ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Future Policy ◽  
Historic Significance

AbstractThe paper traces the history of “conquered landscape” back to the original European colonists and the Puritans. We discuss the contribution of Thomas Jefferson as an architect of Western expansion through the purchase of the Louisiana territory and the mapping of future policy regarding the settling of Western territory. We cover the major moments in the settling of the West and their historic significance. We discuss Frederick Jackson Turner’s concept of the West as “a succession of frontiers” versus revisionist historian Patricia Nelson Limerick’s concept of conquest and conquered territory. The second part of the paper deals with the Native American view of the land, with reference to Paula Gunn Allen’s ideas and Leslie Marmon Silko’s novels Ceremony and Almanac of the Dead. Silko juxtaposes two different kinds of space, Native American versus federal space. The Native American and Anglo-American views of nature are contrasted and explained, with the discussion of aspects of native removal, reterritorialization and misrepresentation.

‘THE MODERN SHOPPING EXPERIENCE’: KINGSWAY DEPARTMENT STORE AND CONSUMER POLITICS IN GHANA

Africa ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 82 (3) ◽  
pp. 368-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bianca Murillo
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Department Store ◽  
Department Stores ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Older Employees ◽  
Kwame Nkrumah ◽  
Shopping Experience ◽  
History Of ◽  
Colonial Capitalism ◽  
Political Economic

ABSTRACTDespite the perception that department stores are a recent phenomenon in West Africa, modern indoor retail spaces have existed in its major cities since the mid-twentieth century. This article uses the history of Kingsway Department Store in Accra as a lens to understand emerging political, economic and social tensions in post-colonial Ghana. Drawing on United Africa Company (UAC) records, staff reports and inspection findings, as well as local newspapers, advertising and oral interviews, I demonstrate how legacies of colonial capitalism, struggles for political independence and negotiations over what constituted the ‘modern’ fuelled both local and foreign support of the project. For the UAC, investment was an opportunity to legitimize its activities in a newly independent Ghana and a means to shed its image as a colonial merchant firm. While local authorities were divided on whether large-scale retail developments should be part of an expanding post-colonial city, Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah thought the store might provide a key component in constructing his vision of a new modern nation. However, the presence of white-collar working women, young managers supervising older employees, and the mixing of white expatriate and African shoppers exacerbated social conflicts – challenging local and colonial notions of authority based on race, gender and age.

POSTMODERN REKLAM AFİŞİ TASARIMI

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (11) ◽  
pp. 329-342
Author(s):  
Elanur PİLİCİ
Keyword(s):  
Social Development ◽  
Graphic Design ◽  
Development Process ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Technological Innovations ◽  
Consumer Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
Institutional Dimension

The history of the art of graphic design and posters goes back to cave drawings during the Stone Age. Graphic design and posters are based on social needs and change in different stages of social development. They are now enjoying one of the apexes of their development. The art of graphic and poster design which developed and evolved in the historical and social development process, has taken on new dimensions during the transition from the modern to the postmodern period in accordance with the needs of our society of consumption and by using the technical/technological tools and methods within this period. In particular, the invention of the printing press, lithography, and the Industrial Revolution have led to great leaps in the art of graphic and poster design as in all other areas of life. Computer and digital technologies that were first developed in the middle of the 20th century almost brought about a revolution in the art of graphic and poster design. These great breakthroughs caused technical and technological innovations and changed the art of graphic design. While education in graphic design acquired an institutional dimension, its aims and objectives were transformed. Discussions of postmodernism, new forms of relationship, concepts and schools are reflected in the art. Relationships between postmodernism and graphic design, poster styles categorized as postmodern and advertising culture have caused new debates. Advertisements and advertising posters have acquired new forms to meet the needs of today’s consumer society, which are getting more and more complex. Its dynamics have changed posters and advertising. This study discusses the evolution of the art of graphic and poster design within the whole historical and social development process, its dimensions, postmodernism and striking examples of postmodern advertising posters.

Fashion, product innovation, and consumer culture in the late 19th century: Alle Città d’Italia department store in Milan

2019 ◽  
pp. 146954051987600
Author(s):  
Elisabetta Merlo ◽  
Carlo Marco Belfanti
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Product Innovation ◽  
Department Store ◽  
Consumer Society ◽  
Mail Order ◽  
Department Stores ◽  
Continuous Change ◽  
Haute Couture

Unlike product invention, product innovation has been overlooked as an issue relevant to the study of the economic, social, and cultural change. It is only in recent times that historians started to explore product innovation in order to understand the origins of consumer society. This article deals with fashion as a kind of product innovation and aims to explain how 19th-century fashion transformed clothing into a product designed and desired primarily for its ever-changing expressive and decorative qualities. The research is based on the mail order catalogs delivered by the Italian department store Alle Città d’Italia in the 1880s. Analysis of this valuable and largely unexplored historical source allowed us to conclude that (1) the innovative nature of 19th-century fashion had mainly to do with the services – ready-to-wear dress and novelty – provided to consumers rather than with the product’s physical components; (2) department stores and haute couture – the sole internationally acknowledged agency of fashioning at the time – both contributed to transform novelty and continuous change into distinctive characteristics of fashion; (3) fashion played a major role in modernizing consumer culture, shifting the focus from material elements to the services inherent in consumer goods.

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