We Have Seen It All. At the Mall

Authors

Carla Corroto, Otterbein UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-24-2018

Publication Title

Qualitative Inquiry

Publisher

Sage Journals

Keywords

shopping, mall, architecture, collaborative autoethnography, globalism, ethnography

Abstract

Many of us have conflicted attitudes toward suburban shopping malls in the United States. Malls are environmentally irresponsible, reinforce a dependence on cars, fortify economic and social stratification, generate private-property, emphasize consumption, and are architecturally disappointing. Malls are also the places where we bought school shoes, where we garnered our first jobs, where we may see a diversity of products and people and tastes, and, remarkably, malls can still surprise us. This article is an overview of mall criticism and a narrative from reluctant mall enthusiasts. We sit at an equivocal place—in between the complexity and contradiction of the suburban shopping mall—while enjoying lunch.

Repository Citation

Corroto, Carla, "We Have Seen It All. At the Mall" (2018). Sociology Faculty Scholarship. 3.
https://digitalcommons.otterbein.edu/socio_fac/3

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800418789451

Version

Post-Print

Publisher's Statement

Under SAGE's Green Open Access policy, upon the article being accepted for publication, the Accepted Version of the article may be posted in the author's institutional repository.

Peer Reviewed

1