考研英语-2006年阅读测试定稿.pdfVIP

In spite of “endless talk of difference ”，American society is an amazing machine for homogenizing people. There is “the democratizing uniformity of dress and discourse ，and the casualness and absence of deference ” characteristic of popular culture. People are absorbed into “a culture of consumption ” launched by the 19th ——century department stores that offered “vast arrays of goods in an elegant atmosphere. Instead of intimate shops catering to a knowledgeable elite, ” these were stores “a