ABSTRACT
An inquiry into the realm of urban retail is essential to an analysis of the modern public sphere. Since the turn of the century, bourgeois society and its culture be-
came manifest not only in clubs and cafés but also in the splendour of metropolitan
shopping arcades and department stores. In Germany, and especially in Berlin, this
bourgeois public sphere beyond the political formed a counterpoint to the symbolic visualization of power in the imperial public sphere. But department stores and
shopping centres never fulfiled the Habermasian notion of an abstract sphere entailing a discourse free from control.1 They have a selling area measurable in square
metres and subject to the management’s authority under private law. Shopping has
been considered a private and feminine activity.2 Individual consumers pursue their
interests and, for the most part, resign themselves to security surveillance and the dominating discourse of marketing and advertisement. Nevertheless, I propose to
interpret institutions of large-scale retail as a semi-public sphere. The department
store is a public place because it is - with few exceptions - generally accessible to
everyone, and a place where social hierarchies manifest themselves, a place that people use and appropriate in various ways. Thus large-scale retail institutions
represent a social space with a symbolic impact on people’s perceptions and
values.3 Occupying a transmission point between public and private spheres, department stores and shopping centres represent fruitful objects for a cultural
historical analysis of everyday life.
