2011/01/01 by Brian Wemp · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Engineering · #Fashion and Cultural Textiles #Visitor pattern #Bourgeoisie #Entertainment #Space (punctuation) #Advertising #Database transaction #Public space #Movie theater #Cultural space #Consumption (sociology) #Sociology #Consumer Culture #Business #Media studies #Art #Visual arts #Engineering #Political science #Computer science #Social science #Architectural engineering #Politics #Law
paper · doi:10.3167/hrrh.2011.370101
openalex publication_date 2011/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/03/10
The Grands Magasins Dufayel, a huge department store built on the northern fringe of late nineteenth-century Paris, had an important cultural influence on the city's working class. In a neighborhood with few public spaces, it provided a consumer version of the public square. It encouraged workers to approach shopping as a social activity, just as the bourgeoisie did at the famous department stores in central Paris. Like the bourgeois stores, it helped transform consumption from a personal transaction between customer and merchant into an unmediated relationship between consumer and goods. Through advertising the store portrayed itself as a space where the working-class visitor could participate in new and exciting forms of entertainment and technology. Its unique instore cinema and exhibits of inventions like X-ray machines and the gramophone created a new kind of urban space that celebrated the close relationship between technology and consumer culture.