Cathedrals of Consumption by Geoffrey Crossick Serge Jaumain

Author:Geoffrey Crossick, Serge Jaumain [Geoffrey Crossick, Serge Jaumain]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, History, European General
ISBN: 9780429640421
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2019-01-04T05:00:00+00:00

Voyeurs of crime

This study has concluded with the trivialisation of department store theft in the late 1920s, when it became the mass phenomenon that we know today. With the assistance offered by the spread of self-service, the banal nature of the offence means that shoplifting is today virtually ignored except by researchers and those whom it directly concerns. The question of why people steal without any apparent necessity does not arouse public interest, even though the scientific discussion is more intense now than ever before. In 1900, the situation seems to have been different, for people were fascinated by both the new department stores and theft from them. Newspapers carried not only advertisements for the stores but also reports on thieves who had been apprehended and their remarkable offences. These escapades include the case of a woman who hid in a department store in order to be locked in overnight, only to be caught the next morning with her hoard of stolen goods because she had fallen asleep after drinking too much alcohol,84 and that of the ecstatic woman whose hand grabbed the forbidden fruits like a flash of lightning and who thus lost her honour.85 Reports of new ingenious techniques of theft were excitedly followed by the readers and the imaginative ploys of the criminals provoked amazement.86 There was also a novel which was serialised in one of Germany’s leading magazines. It told the story of a respectable man whose aristocratic fiancée slipped a piece of jewellery into his pocket without his noticing. He was caught and only saved from a prison sentence by a saleswoman who in due course became his devoted wife.87 Nevertheless, department store theft was only briefly a topic of general public interest and, despite a considerable number of articles, an in-depth discussion of the phenomenon did not materialise.

The German middle classes became voyeurs who observed the incidents only to heap unreserved condemnation on the offenders. The public debate had little or nothing to do with reality. Only unusual stories were discussed, many of them imaginary or at least embellished. This public representation hardly differed from the way in which department store theft was later interpreted by the various specialists, who reinterpreted it according to their own ideas and took popular prejudices as the basis for scientific research. Whilst the department stores seemed for a while to represent the fulfilment of their customers’ desires, the phenomenon of department store theft seemed to confirm the worst contemporary fears. As the department store gradually receded as an object of public fascination, so the discourse on department store theft grew less intense. The public had made its peace with the phenomenon long before science trivialised it. Only the most spectacular cases attracted public attention and even those were instantly forgotten once a new and more interesting topic arose. New ways had to be found to express new anxieties, such as fear of escalating crime, of the economic disintegration of society or of the fundamental nature and sexuality of woman.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.