Retail and Community: Business, Charity and Global Britain in the Long 20th Century

Retail has never existed in a vacuum. This interdisciplinary volume explores how English commercial, co-operative and charity retailing were shaped by and in turn influenced their social and political environments, from the local to the global, between the late nineteenth and early twenty-first centuries. Historians, sociologists, archivists and heritage professionals engage with current debates on the rise of modern business and the decline of the high street, class and credit, professionalisation in the voluntary sector, migration and the end of empire. This book will be a key resource to better understand retail and community in an era defined by social change, shedding new light on the enduring centrality of community relationships to modern retailers.

George Campbell Gosling is Senior Lecturer at the University of Wolverhampton. Alix R. Green is Reader at the University of Essex. Grace Millar is Researcher at the University of Wolverhampton.