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While becoming less relevant in the United States, shopping malls are booming throughout urban Latin America. But what does this mean on the ground? Are shopping malls a sign of the region’s “coming of age”? El Mall is the first book to answer these questions and explore how malls and consumption are shaping the conversation about class and social inequality in Latin America.
Through original and insightful ethnography, Dávila shows that class in the neoliberal city is increasingly defined by the shopping habits of ordinary people. Moving from the global operations of the shopping mall industry to the experience of shopping in places like Bogotá, Colombia, El Mall is an indispensable book for scholars and students interested in consumerism and neoliberal politics in Latin America and the world.
Through original and insightful ethnography, Dávila shows that class in the neoliberal city is increasingly defined by the shopping habits of ordinary people. Moving from the global operations of the shopping mall industry to the experience of shopping in places like Bogotá, Colombia, El Mall is an indispensable book for scholars and students interested in consumerism and neoliberal politics in Latin America and the world.
Price: $29.95
Pages: 248
Publisher: University of California Press
Imprint: University of California Press
Publication Date:
05 January 2016
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9780520286856
Format: Paperback
"Overall, Dávila treats the mall as a microcosm of wider changes in governance, economics and social relations... nuanced."
"Building on years of interdisciplinary fieldwork, both introduce methods for mobilizing larger projects to provide space within which new socially oriented urbanisms might unfold. Dávila’s volume is a deep ethnographic account of the mall, a program that is declining in North America but proliferating globally, particularly in Latin America. The study illuminates why this is the case, building on Dávila’s extensive scholarship on urban consumption in Colombian cities and identity marketing among the Latinx middle class."
"Malls are iconic and often the locus of narratives about globalizing consumer culture, but as Arlene Dávila shows, the role of the mall is not so simple. . . . El Mall speaks to processes of making a middle class."
Arlene Dávila is Professor of Anthropology and Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. She is the author of numerous books, including Barrio Dreams (UC Press, 2004) and Latinos Inc. (UC Press, 2001, 2012).