ABSTRACT
This chapter explores multiple, often contradictory, discourses and practices of shopping, consumption, and consumerism, in an attempt to learn more about how people who are concerned about globalization and consumption learn about environmental issues through their shopping and act on that learning in an attempt to change the status quo. It outlines how shopping has evolved in the context of historical and social developments. Because the focus of one empirical research is the Canadian city of Vancouver, British Columbia, one consideration of shopping is confined to its evolution in Western societies and, more specifically to middle-class practices in urban areas. Shopping became an example of how the mundane is not necessarily simple, of how taken-for-granted habits can be occasions for learning, of how the personal really is political. Even sociologists and cultural studies scholars recognize the link between shopping or consumption and learning, in one case describing them as situated learning practices which are co-productive of consumer's desires and objectives.
