Shelf Life

This book offers a history and cultural analysis of the supermarket and of everyday shopping in twentieth-century Australia. It discusses the rise of the supermarket in the United States and Britain and its eventual emergence in Australia in the 1960s. This is contrasted with the demise of the counter service grocery store. As well the views of shoppers in Australia toward the new supermarkets are documented through the use of oral history. More broadly the book involves a critical discussion of what it means to live in a consumer society and of the work of cultural analysts on consumption.