eBay and research in historical geography

Journal of Historical Geography

Volumn 30, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 764-782

  DeLyser, Dydia ^a   Sheehan, Rebecca ^a   Curtis, Andrew ^a  

^a LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Auctions; Consumption; eBay; Historical geography; Research methods

Indexed keywords

CONSUMPTION BEHAVIOR; E-COMMERCE; GEOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH; THEORETICAL STUDY; TRADE;

EID: 18844426998     PISSN: 03057488     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhg.2005.01.001     Document Type: Article

References (91)

1. Academic researchers are showing an increasing interest in using the Internet as a tool for performing research. See, for example C. Madge H. O'Conner On-line with e-mums: Exploring the Internet as a medium for research Area 34 2002 92-102
2. C. Mann and F. Stewart Internet Communication and Internet Research: A Handbook for Researching Online 2000 not known Thousand Oaks
3. J. Sefton-Green Young People, Creativity, and New Technologies: The Challenge of Digital Arts 1999 not known New York
4. S. O'Lear Using electronic mail (E-mail) surveys for geographic research: Lessons from a survey of russian environmentalists The Professional Geographer 48 1996 213-222
5. Others have explored cyber geographies. See, for example, M. Crang P. Crang J. May Virtual Geographies: Bodies, Spaces, and Relations 1999 not known London
6. R. Kitchin Towards geographies of cyberspace Progress in Human Geography 22 1998 385-406
7. P. Adams Cyberspace and virtual places The Geographical Review 87 1997 155-171. Our aim here is to discuss acquiring research materials online, not virtual geographies or doing online research
8. Nor, of course, do we wish to slight this interesting and engaging work. See, for example, A. Appadurai Introduction: Commodities and the politics of value in: A. Appadurai (Ed.) The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective 1986 not known Cambridge 3-63
9. L. Crewe Geographies of retailing and consumption Progress in Human Geography 24 2000 275-290
10. L. Crewe The besieged body: Geographies of retailing and consumption Progress in Human Geography 24 2001 629-640
11. L. Crewe N. Gregson Tales of the unexpected: Exploring car boot sales as marginal spaces of contemporary consumption Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS 23 1998 39-53
12. J. Goss Once-upon-a-time in the commodity world: An unofficial guide to Mall of America Annals of the Association of American Geographers 89 1 1999 45-75
13. D. Miller Consumption as the vanguard of history in: D. Miller (Ed.) Acknowledging Consumption 1995 not known London
14. R. Sack The consumer's world: Place as context Annals of the Association of American Geographers 78 1988 642-664
15. See N. Gregson L. Crewe K. Brooks Shopping, space, and practice Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 20 2002 597-617 on this tension in charity shop (or thrift store) shopping.
16. See Goss, Once-upon-a-time in the commodity world.
17. www.eBay.com, 2002; eBay does prohibit certain items from sale, including alcohol (except wine), credit cards, drugs, drug paraphernalia, firearms, human parts and remains, lock-picking devices, plants and seeds, prescription drugs, stocks and other securities, surveillance equipment, and tobacco. As soon as the company became aware, it also removed listings offering for sale pieces of debris from the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center collapse-such listings had appeared within minutes. See J. Adler The eBay way of life Newsweek 2000 50-60
18. www.eBay.com, 2001.
19. www.eBay.com, 2000.
20. Boston Herald, 18 March 2000.
21. More recently, eBay's selling policy 'does not allow listings that are intended as jokes,'' (quoted in USAToday, 17 November 2004) though this has been difficult for the company, strictly speaking, to determine. See, for example, Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese Back Up on eBay. See USAToday, 17 November 2004.
22. eBay is not the only online auction house. Others include, for example, Auction.com, QXL.com, uBid.com, and zbestoffer.com. See http://www.ftpplanet.com/auction/auction_sites.htm. for a more extensive list of on-line auction sites. But even in combining all other online auction companies' market shares, eBay still holds the majority of the market (www.eBay.com, 2001). Furthermore, in January 2002, Sotheby's (the oldest brick-and-mortar auction house, established in 1744) formed an alliance with eBay for on-line auctions, where Sotheby's was incorporated into the eBay marketplace, further demonstrating eBay's authority in online auctions.
23. Ebay, Inc. Press Release. Ebay, Inc. Announces Third Quarter 2004 Financial Results, 20 October 2004.
24. CBSNews.com, eBay's Bid For Success, 11 June 2003. Accessed 5 November 2003 at: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/30/60II
25. B. Learmount A History of the Auction 1985 not known London
26. D. Prince Online Auctions eBay 1999 not known Rockline
27. K. Cheng eBay Mediaweek 9 1999 42
28. The AugustaChronicle.com, eBay's early days weren't about PEZ dispensers, posted 17 June 2002. Accessed 18 November 2004 at http://www.augustachronicle.com'stories/06172/tec_124-2028.shtml
29. Forbes, The World's Richest People, 26 February 2004. Accessed 18 November 2004 at http://www.forbes.com/finance/lists/10/2004
30. The Augustachronicle.com, 17 June 2002.
31. D. Bunnell The eBay Phenomenon: Business Secrets Behind the World's Hottest Internet Company 2000 not known New York
32. Learmount, A History of the Auction, 9.
33. Prince, Online Auctions eBay.
34. See Appadurai, Introduction: Commodities and the politics of value, 15. Auctions, to be sure, are not innocent market venues. From at least the seventeenth century and into the nineteenth century slave auctions not only took place but they formed a significant percentage of the entire global auction market.
35. See Learmount, A History of the Auction, 9
36. D. Howell I Was A Slave: Book Six-Slave Auctions 1999. not known Washington, DC Also, wife auctions began as early as the fifth century B.C. with a report by Herodotus of Halicarnassus.
37. See C. Smith Auctions: The Social Construction of Value 1989 not known New York
38. Appadurai, Introduction: Commodities and the politics of value; Crewe and Gregson, Tales of the unexpected; Smith, Auctions.
39. Prince, Online Auctions eBay
40. J. Sinclair eBay the Smart Way 2000 not known New York
41. The high bidder was the Levi Strauss compant itself; eBay Press Release, 24 May 2001.
42. Prince, Online Auctions eBay. Another, though less common type of auction used on eBay is the 'Dutch auction', used when multiple examples of the same item are available for sale at the same time. Here bidders bid not only on price, but also on the number of items they wish to buy.
43. www.eBay.com, 2001. For some eBay items, it is no longer necessary to engage in the auction process at all: The 'Buy It Now' option enables a seller to choose to set a price that she/he will sell the item for immediately. If any bidder selects this price before any other bids on the auction have been registered, the auction is ended, and the buyer is committed to the sale, see www.eBay.com
44. B. Sullivan, Ebay fights its toughest legal battle, 21 September 2004. Accessed 19 November 2004 at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6030048/print/1/ displaymode/1098/
45. www.eBay.com, accessed 5 November 2003; Neither is eBay a strictly American phenomenon: There are currently twenty-three countries where eBay operates its auction websites, www.eBay.com, accessed 18 November 2004.
46. eBay's growth has been tremendous; when the authors investigated similar categories just three years earlier the numbers were dramatically smaller. For example, the 'Maps and Atlases' category grew from an average of 6,600 a day to 10,141 a day.
47. Another helpful tool is the 'My eBay' page where users can save their favorite searches, or ask to be notified by e-mail each time a particular item comes up for auction, see www.eBay.com
48. Nielsen//NetRatings 2004. Accessed 18 November 2004 at http:www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/traffic_patterns/print.php/3410151
49. Bunnell, The eBay Phenomenon; www.eBay.com, 2001.
50. For example, eBay provides community help, category specific, and user-by-user discussion boards and chat rooms. Seventy-two community help boards provide a public space for asking questions and reading about such topics as bids, searches, eBay polices, trust, and safety. User-to-user boards include, for example, 'The eBay Town Square', 'The Soap Box', and 'The Park', which range from miscellaneous ideas and pet peeves about eBay to eBay community sponsored real recreational activities. Thirty-five chat rooms, sometimes called 'cafes', also provide similar avenues to people, ideas, and information on a variety of topics, www.eBay.com, accessed 18 November 2004.
51. See for example N. Barta-Smith J. Hathaway Making cyberspaces into cybersplaces Journal of Geography 99 2000 253-266
52. H. Rheingold The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier 2000 not known Cambridge
53. D. Walmsley Community, place, and cyberspace, Australian Geographer 31 2000 5-19
54. S. Turkle Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet 1997 not known New York
55. R. Shields Cultures of the Internet: Virtual Spaces, Real Histories, Living Bodies 1996 not known Thousand Oaks
56. It is common for cars, homes and even airplanes to be auctioned on eBay. In fact, the most expensive item yet sold was an airplane: In August 2001, a Gulfstream II business jet, described as 'a luxurious aircraft configured to seat twelve passengers in plush surroundings', sold for $4.9 million. News and Star, 11 May 2004, accessed 19 November 2004 at http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/motors/viewarticle.aspx?id=151322
57. For example, when DeLyser bought a nineteenth-century leather bound book and the seller accidentally severed the cover after the auction's close, the seller shipped the book to her free of charge, ignoring both the shipping costs and the price to be paid in the auction, but gaining positive feedback.
58. eBay.com, accessed 9 November 2003.
59. While most old newspapers are collected for the stories that appear in them (e.g. the first moon landing, or the bombing of Pearl Harbor, for example), and others for the date (e.g. a person's date of birth), some newspapers are collected because of the town they are from (newspapers from the gold-mining town of Bodie, California are highly collectible regardless of date or content), or for the name of the newspaper itself (e.g. the Tombstone Epitaph).
60. eBay does offer bidders the chance to ask sellers questions by e-mail. We have, for example, asked sellers for additional images of particular items, or for clarification of text or content. If the request is asked in a timely manner (long enough before the close of the auction), sellers are usually happy, to the best of their abilities, to oblige.
61. The newspaper, The Nashville, is available on microfilm at the University of Tennessee but would only be available at Louisiana State University via interlibrary loan to our special collections unit, which would add another series of restrictions to extracting the required information.
62. N. Gregson and L. Crewe Second-Hand Cultures 2003 not known Oxford
63. Fun, itself, however, is an important aspect of many consumption practices. Particularly in the realm of recycled goods (whether second-hand stores, flea markets, antique shops or eBay) where, unlike in conventional retailing (e.g. the stores in the mall) particular items are never to be found with certainty, fun is a prominent part of the consumption experience. See Crewe and Gregson, Tales of the unexpected
64. and Gregson and Crewe, Second-Hand Cultures.
65. M. Smallman-Raynor and A. Clif Epidemic diffusion process in a system of US military camps: Transfer diffusion and the spread of typhoid fever in the Spanish-American War, 1898 Annals of the Association of American Geographers 91 2001 71-91
66. See the contributions in J. Elsner and R. Cardinal The Cultures of Collecting 1997, not known London especially the interview with packaging collector Robert Opie, 25-48
67. S. Pearce On Collecting: An Investigation into Collecting in the European Tradition 1995 not known London
68. www.eBay.com, 2001, original listing in January for five days. All listings are eventually stripped from the eBay website, thus leaving no permanent, publicly available record.
69. H. Jackson Ramona: A Story 1884 not known Boston
70. C. McWilliams, Southern California Country: An Island on the Land (Salt Lake City, 1973, first published 1946), 73.
71. McWilliams, Southern California Country, 73.
72. McWilliams, Southern California Country
73. F. Walker A Literary History of Southern California 1950 not known Berkeley
74. J.F. Dobie Introduction in: H.H. Jackson (Ed.) Ramona 1959 not known Los Angeles vii-xv
75. M. Davis City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles 1990 not known London
76. E.W. Stevens Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona: Social problem novel as tourist guide California History 1998 158-167
77. D. DeLyser Authenticity on the ground: Engaging the past in a California ghost town Annals of the Association of American Geographers 89 1999 602-632
78. D. DeLyser When less is more: Absence and landscape in a California ghost town in: P. Adams S. Hoelscher and K. Till (Eds.) Textures of Place: Exploring Humanist Geographies 2000 not known Minneapolis 24-40
79. D. DeLyser 'Do you really live here?' thoughts on insider research The Geographical Review 91 2001 441-453
80. See, for example, D. DeLyser Ramona memories: Fiction, tourist practices, and placing the past in southern California Annals of the Association of American Geographers 93 2003 886-908
81. D. DeLyser, Recovering social memories from the past: The 1884 novel Ramona and tourist practices in turn-of-the-century southern California, Social and Cultural Geographies (forthcoming) which are illustrated nearly entirely from my own collection.
82. See Elsner and Cardinal, The Cultures of Collecting
83. See Pearce, On Collecting
84. and Gregson and Crewe, Second-Hand Cultures.
85. In fact, as Susan Stewart has pointed out, the collector replaces the narrative of production with one of luck. S. Stewart On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection 1993 not known Durham The quote is from Pearce, 1993, 386
86. Pearce, On Collecting, 386.
87. See, An interview with Robert Opie, in Elsner and Cardinal, The Cultures of Collecting, for insight into the life of a collector of both antique and contemporary food packaging. His collection now fills both his home and his museum, it dominates his supermarket purchases, and his commitment to it even limits his ability to travel.
88. Gregson and Crewe, Second-Hand Cultures.
89. See, for example, DeLyser, Ramona memories; DeLyser, Recovering social memories from the past; D. DeLyser, Ramona Memories: Tourism, Romance, and the Shaping of Southern California, Minneapolis, 2005.
90. J. Adler, (June 17, 2000) 51-52.
91. Because the availability of second-hand items cannot be relied upon, second-hand shopping is described by Gregson and Crewe's informants as 'work'. See Gregson and Crewe, Second-Hand Cultures.