Everyday Encounters in the Shopping Mall

(Un)Making Boundaries in the Divided Cities of Johannesburg and Mostar

Bibliographic Data

ID2145047
AuthorsAna Aceska (0000-0002-0315-1969, Cultural Geography Group, Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, Netherlands, corresponding author), Barbara Heer (University of Basel)
Year2019
Volume29
Issue1
Pages47-61
Publication date2019-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAnthropological Forum (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0066-4677 • E-ISSN: 1469-2902
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00664677.2019.1585751
OpenAlexW2921263187
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited50

The many studies that see shopping malls as places of power, control and exclusion have often neglected the potential of malls as places of encounters. Drawing on ethnographic data from the divided cities of Johannesburg in South Africa and Mostar in Bosnia-Herzegovina, we examine the ways in which urban dwellers who enter the mall from a marginalised position - poor black urban dwellers at a regional, middle class and white-dominated mall in Johannesburg and Bosniak city dwellers at a mall located in the Croat part of Mostar - use the mall, what kind of relations they build to others and how they rework boundaries of race, class, religion and ethnicity at the mall. Rather than being spaces that strengthen and reproduce centre-margins relations, urban dwellers appropriate them as places where these relations become reworked

Archaeology · Ethnic group · Ethnography · Geography · Shopping mall · Sociology · White (mutation · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Public Spaces through Art · Urban Planning and Governance

Tools

Open DOISci-HubOpen Access