Addicted to shopping? A critical look at the cultural narrative of retail therapy

Keeley Megan Buehler Hunter

Chapter 33 in Research Handbook on the Sociology of Consumption, 2026, pp 384-393 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter critiques the impacts of retail therapy on our relationships, identities, and agency in a U.S. American context. It explores how people communicate about retail therapy, and their uses of it to manage strong feelings. The chapter draws on research from a rhetorical perspective, attending to the ways power moves through cultural messages, promoting a discourse of retail therapy. Data is drawn from popular culture as well as in-depth interviews with self-proclaimed practitioners of retail therapy. Foucault's notion of dispositif is used to understand how diverse messages about retail therapy circulate similar messages about the value of shopping to feel good and be happy to create a powerful network of governance. This chapter underscores the power retail therapy wields in people's personal, social, and economic lives, which often gets overlooked in our attempts to manage our feelings, our identities, and our relationships.

Keywords: Shopping; Retail therapy; Dispositif; Rhetoric; Interviews; Governance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035310500
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