Cultural Geography

GOING SHOPPING

Shopping and retailing both exemplify the

different variations of postmodern thought and

have constituted the most decisive site for the con-

junctionof cultural geography and consumption

studies. Indeed, the beginning of geography’s

major contribution to contemporary consumption

studies was probably marked by two mid 1990s

publications: a special issue of Environment

and Planning Aon Changing Geographies of

Consumption, edited by Peter Jackson

(1995–96); and the ‘new retail geography’

heralded by Wrigley and Lowe (1996; see also

sections of Jackson et al., 2000). This is probably

unsurprising since places of purchase concretely

spatialize people’s encounters with commodities,

while – conversely – so much contemporary

social space seems structured in relation to con-

sumption. Shopping became a central and evoca-

tive issue with the rise of postmodern theory in

the 1980s (the huge literature includes Bowlby,

1985; Chaney, 1991; Falk and Campbell, 1997;

Ferguson, 1992; Gottdiener, 1997; Laermans,

1993; Langman, 1992; Nava, 1987; Nixon, 1992;

Ritzer, 1999; Shields, 1992a; Slater, 1993), in

which it came to stand for a central site through

which the postmodern triumph of the sign could

be studied and was enacted. As Glennie and

Thrift (1996) point out, this research focus could

take at least two quite opposed forms. On the

one hand, a largely productivist and pessimistic

line of thought looked at the new centrality of

consumption and of shopping sites as a function

of transformations in capital and the increased

velocity and fluidity of circulation, itself partly a

consequence of the ever-greater role of signify-

ing processes in capitalist accumulation (for

example, Harvey, 1985; 1989; Jameson, 1984).

This involved new forms of rationalization of

retail, including a move away from the more

Fordist organization of the supermarket to the

construction of more complex cultural spaces

that provided a range of experiences, treated

shopping as part of a total leisure experience

(rather than the functional satisfaction of con-

sumer needs through goods), and resulted in

the production of spaces that had the character

of ‘dreamworlds’ (Williams, 1982) – the self-

enclosed, ‘hyperreal’ ‘no-space’ of the out-of town

shopping mall or downtown retail development.

The former was emblematized in developments

such as Edmonton mall in Canada or MetroCentre

in the UK (Chaney, 1991), which shifted central

city retail functions out of town to new spaces

entirely constructed in relation to consumption

practices; the latter by modern complexes such as

the Bonaventura in Los Angeles(Jameson, 1984)

or heritage recoveries of older, pre-industrial

marketplaces such as Quincy market in Boston

or Covent Garden in London. All of these

developments seemed to reach backwards to

simulate historical models of retail space – the

arcade, the department store or the marketplace

itself (M. Miller, 1981; Slater, 1993; Williams,

1982). At the same time, authors such as Zukin

and DiMaggio (1990; Zukin, 1991), Soja (1989;

2000) and Harvey (1985; 1989) argued that these

developments need to be seen – however they

may present themselves – as a conflict of power

between new forms of centralizing capital and

the previously more diverse and chaotic spaces

formed by organic city development. In Zukin’s

terminology, there was a ‘battle for downtown’

between ‘landscapes of power’ (the reformatting

of urban space by new retail capital) and the

‘vernacular’ city life that previously inhabited

these spaces (or which were sidelined by a move

out of town).

The more optimistic reading of these develop-

ments focused on the emergence of new forms of

subjectivity that seemed well adapted to these

spaces and which also seemed to emblematize

the postmodern. Firstly, consumption sites were

recognized as providing new locations of social

centrality (Shields, 1992a; 1992b). Just like the

town centres they so often replaced or shifted to

new locations, these sites congregated and

focused the activities and signs through which

people enact and experience civic identity

and civic life. It is a matter of a lot more than

shopping even if shopping is the central occasion

for congregating. Visibility – of people, goods

and settings – plays a central role here in acting

out the social (which has led to a renewed focus

on Benjamin’s elaboration of the figure of the

flaneur). Issues of policing entry (Davis, 1990)

are crucial in regulating entry into sociality (and

exclusion from these spaces is a real social exclu-

sion) and in producing (commercially) desired

images of the social (for example, the exclusion

of unruly youth, or the poor or ethnic groups).

Secondly, the new retailing practices and subjec-

tivities were associated with consumers who

were both highly reflexive and fluid in their

relationship to the myriad signs on offer. Going

shopping was given the character of a prepara-

tion for a costume party, in which we try on or

play at multiple identities and desires through

various imaginative encounters with goods

and their significations: not just in buying and

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