The Blog post contains the following IELTS Reading Questions:
- IELTS reading locating information questions
- IELTS reading yes no not given questions
- IELTS reading sentence completion questions
A Theory of Shopping Reading Passage
In the allocated time, you must read the given passage and then answer the following questions (1-14). Check your work using the provided answers to the A Theory of Shopping reading answer.
A Theory of Shopping
I spent a year trying to document the shopping culture of one street in North London. Alison Clarke collaborated on this project. Given the lack of communal life and the very private nature of London homes, this could not be an ethnography in the traditional sense. Nonetheless, I sought to learn about what goes into grocery shopping by talking to, observing, and accompanying 76 different families as they went about their weekly routines.
In my section of ethnography, I focused on the experience of shopping. Since then, Alison Clarke has continued her work with the same families, however, she has shifted her attention to non-traditional sources of provisions, like catalogues (see Clarke 1997). In most cases, we initially met these families as a group; nevertheless, the majority of the data used in this essay came from my individual follow-up fieldwork. As a next step, we plan to create a broader ethnography of provisioning after we finish this essay and investigate some adjacent shopping malls. The ramifications for business and the broader political economy, as well as the concept of community, will also be explored. However, this is not included in the present essay, which is focused on laying forth the cosmological grounds for retail therapy.
Simply saying that we must rule out the possibility of a wide range of involvement levels only by stating that a household is a participant in the study. All that is required is for a resident to consent to be questioned about where they shop for groceries and other essentials, whether it is the local shopping parade, a mall, or a supermarket. On the other end of the spectrum are the families we’ve gotten to know rather well this year. Interviews would be conducted formally, and visits to their homes would be made on a less official basis, typically with a cup of tea. It also entailed going along with them on a shopping excursion or attending an event related to Clarke’s research, such as a gathering of people who make or sell goods for the house.
I feel pulled in opposite directions as I try to write up my findings from an ethnography of shopping in North London. Anthropological relativists have long placed a premium on differences, and there are numerous ways in which shopping might shed light on these distinctions. Shopping, for instance, can be a very different experience depending on factors like age, gender, race, and socioeconomic status. There are also distinctions in shopping experiences like those found in a shopping center and those found at a corner store. On the other hand, there is the tradition of anthropological generalization about ‘peoples’ and comparative theory. This leads to the question as to whether there are any fundamental aspects of shopping that suggest a robust normativity that emerges from research and isn’t diluted to zero by relativism. This essay will focus on the latter perspective and the argument that most, if not all, retail activities along this street follow a normative pattern that must be addressed. In the following section, I will argue that a diverse array of homes can be accurately represented by a common set of cultural behaviors.
My proposed theory runs counter to the vast majority of existing works on the subject. My hypothesis differs from the majority of studies of consumption, whether they come from the fields of economics, business studies, or cultural studies, in that it assumes that the majority of homes on this street rarely if ever aimed their shopping towards the person doing the shopping. Therefore, shopping is not best viewed as an act of individualism or subjectification of the shopper. Rather, there are two types of “otherness” that consumers are typically aiming their purchases at. The first one communicates the shopper’s feelings about a certain other person, such as a child or partner, who may or may not exist in the home but is nonetheless important to the shopper in some way. The second kind of connection is to the values to which individuals aspire, rather than to any particular thing or person; this kind of connection is cosmic in nature and beyond the limits of utility.
During my entire time conducting ethnography, the idea that sacrifice would be important to my study never crossed my mind. Therefore, ethnography cannot be considered a test of the arguments made here. In the preliminary analysis of the London material, the discussion of thrift in chapter 3 stood out as particularly pertinent. Reading Bataille was crucial in unlocking the possibilities of sacrifice for comprehending consumer spending. Bataille was only the spark, however, as I will show that it is the classic works on sacrifice and, in particular, the foundation of its modern analysis by Hubert and Mauss (1964), that have become the major foundations for my interpretation. It is crucial, however, when reading the following account to note that when I use the word ‘sacrifice’, I only rarely refer to the colloquial sense of the term meaning the self-sacrificing’ housewife stereotype. The vast majority of the references are to works that examine the rituals and history of ancient sacrifice in great depth. In the discussion that follows, the term’s figurative meaning may be relevant, but this is secondary to a structural argument.
A Theory of Shopping Reading AnswersQuestions 1-3
Choose THREE letters A-F.
Write your answers in boxes 1-3 on your answer sheet.
Which THREE of the following are problems the writer encountered when conducting his study?
- Difficulty getting people to open up about their routines
- Getting enough people to participate in the study could be challenging
- The inability to observe some people’s behaviors as thoroughly as others
- Hesitance in deciding where to direct his research’s attention
- Due to the region’s multicultural populace
- Participants who withdraw from the study after signing up for it
Questions 4-11
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 4-11 on your answer sheet write
- YES if the statement agrees with the news of the writer
- NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer
- NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
4. The study’s findings will lend credence to the conclusions of previous studies
5. Anthropological relativists can learn a lot by analyzing how people in different cultures shop
6. Some shoppers take the time to question their own motivations while out buying
7. There is a wider audience for the concept of anthropological relativism than for anthropological generalizations
8. Buying things for other people is what shopping is all about
9. It’s feasible to make broad statements about retail
10. The study’s results could have been anticipated in advance
11. Most of the time and energy spent shopping is focused on the actual items purchased
Questions 12-14
Complete the sentences below with words taken from Reading Passage 3.
Use NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.
Write your answer in boxes 12-13 on your answer sheet.
12. Writings by whose research the author has drawn most heavily on
13. This is because the writer rarely employs the sense of “sacrifice” that
14. Concerning the focus of scholarly works the author’s first hypothesis that grew out of his research was
A Theory of Shopping Reading Answers
- A
- C
- E
- NO
- YES
- NOT GIVEN
- NOT GIVEN
- YES
- YES
- NO
- NO
- THRIFT
- COLLOQUIAL / METAPHORICAL
- HUBERT AND MAUSS
