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Crossick, Geoffrey, and Serge Jaumain, eds., Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999. Pp. xvii, 326. Black-and-white illustrations, index. US$99.95.
Over the last couple of decades, Geoffrey Crossick has co-edited a series of works, often with Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, that have largely defined the study of the urban lower middle class. Their Shopkeepers and Master Artisans in Nineteenth-Century Europe, in particular, is a seminal work in the social history of nineteenth-century small-business people. And now, with Serge Jaumain, Crossick turns his attention to the petite bourgeoisie's indispensable enemy, the department stores.
As with Crossick's other collections, this volume is timely, arriving at a point where interest in its subject is growing, but where the field remains fragmented. Unfortunately, unlike Crossick's other books, this one merits a lukewarm welcome.
Reflecting the multiplicity of approaches to the study of the department store, the articles in this collection range from treatments of architectural design to explorations of the socio-economic dimensions of mass consumption. Overall, what the contributions share is a vision of department stores as symbols rather than as business enterprises. This book looks through the plate glass and imagines the people surging along the streets outside. Two of the articles--those by Tim Coles on department store locations in Germany and Gabor Gyani on class and consumption in Budapest--are contributions to debates about the extent and speed of economic modernization. Others, such as Erika Rappaport's on the image of shop girls on London stages...