Open-display and the ‘re-agencing’ of the American economy: Lessons from a ‘pico-geography’ of grocery stores in the USA, 1922–1932
通过分析1920年代美国杂货店从柜台服务转向自助服务过程中“开放式陈列”的引入，研究市场如何通过设备与人员组合实现“再能动化”，对理解零售变迁和市场构建有参考价值。
This paper aims to describe marketization processes in terms of ‘market agencing’. The agencing framework is presented through the study of the Progressive Grocer, a trade magazine that presented new ideas about the grocery business and proposed novel ‘agencements’ for American grocery stores in the early 1920s. The case shows that agencing consists of combining the agency of grocers and market devices to shape a different retail environment; that is, a new ‘agencement’ as a situated and flexible combination of market equipment and managerial logics. The paper shows how the introduction of ‘open display’ – that is, providing a better visual access to the goods while preserving service – introduced new furniture and ideas, and thus eased the transition from counter service to self-service. The first section presents the agencing framework, the empirical source, The Progressive Grocer, and the method used to analyse it. This method is labelled ‘pico-geography’. The idea is to conduct analysis on an even smaller scale than micro-geography by focusing on spatial reconfigurations that occur at the indoor and store level. The second section presents the concept of the open display and describes how it contributed to ‘re-agence’ the grocery equipment, workforce and even consumers. The third section puts this journey into perspective, revealing that, though promoted by The Progressive Grocer, it was also part of a larger reconfiguration involving several other actors. The conclusion stresses the empirical, methodological and theoretical contribution of the paper.