In the context of widespread precarity and ongoing crises, it is no surprise ruins have captured much attention in recent years. This book is about a new kind of space, one that is deeply troubling for consumer society: the retail ruin.

Jacob C. Miller bridges human geography, archaeology and critical urban studies to offer a starting point for conceptualizing retail ruins. Drawing on fieldnotes and photographs, Miller crafts a hauntological approach informed by the theories of Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida to more recent thinking on assemblage, spectacle and the politics of urban space.

“Miller dares to peer through the dirtied windows of the deserted shops on our high streets, suggesting these ruins may symbolize the end times but also represent the beginning of a move beyond the spectacle to a more authentic form of consumption.” Phil Hubbard, King’s College London

“As high street shop closures accelerate, Miller's highly evocative discussion of retail ruins is most timely. His focus on concepts of the spectacular and the haunted draws out their potency as fixtures that once lived, may slide into dereliction but may once again be reconfigured as retail spaces.” Tim Edensor, Manchester Metropolitan University

“Miller is a passionate spectator of retail ruins, wandering through the creative destruction of the high street and keeping the teeming debris at bay through the careful taking of notes and the clicking of his camera.” Deborah Dixon, University of Glasgow

Jacob C. Miller is Assistant Professor of Human Geography at Northumbria University.

Introduction

1. What Are Retail Ruins?

2. Retail Ruins

3. Spectacle, Haunted

Conclusion

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