“The Biggest Small-Town Store in America”: Independent Retailers and the Rise of Consumer Culture
以纽约州奥尼昂塔的布雷西百货商店为案例，研究小镇百货商店在20世纪初并未完全现代化，信用和易货等传统交易方式持续存在，挑战了消费社会形成的传统分期。
The case study of Bresee's Department Store in Oneonta, New York, suggests that small-town department stores were not necessarily fully “modern” by the early twentieth century. This article demonstrates how modern, big-store, business methods came later and documents how earlier modes of trade, such as credit and bartering, persisted into the early twentieth century, even in non-rural, northern contexts. Preliminary findings suggest that eliminating the urban bias in much historiography by including small-town retailing practices may lead to a later periodization of American consumer society.