Description
Liquor, tobacco, processed food, and sugary snacks: this is the range of products that are far from healthy available in convenience stores. Yetthese stores have become people's resource for meeting daily needs in deprived neighborhoods in the United States. In her book, Convenience Stores as Social Spaces: Trust and Relations in Deprived Neighborhoods in the U.S., Cosima Werner explores the contested meanings of these stores and their function as social hubs in a social fabric where poverty, violence, and social neglect are part of peoples' daily life. Despite the strict security measures around the stores, language barriers, and cultural differences that make convenience stores appear as the antithesis of social spaces, trustful relationships are crucial for residents to access resources such as loans, food, drinks, or information to make ends meet. The concepts of trust and mistrust shed light on the fragility of trust within these communities. Through ethnographic research conducted in Chicago and Detroit, she reveals the unique ways in which these stores are viewed and utilized by residents.
Author: Cosima Werner
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 05/31/2023
Pages: 294
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.33lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.81d
ISBN13: 9781666930771
ISBN10: 1666930776
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Anthropology | Cultural & Social
- Social Science | Human Geography
- Social Science | Sociology | Urban
About the Author
Cosima Werner is postdoctoral fellow in the Geography Department at Kiel University.