City & Society
Book Review
El Mall: The Spatial and Class
Politics of Shopping Malls in Latin
America. Arlene Dávila, Oakland, CA:
University of California Press, 2016, 248
pp.
Elizabeth Eklund
University of Arizona
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. By
taking a multifaceted ethnographic
approach, Dávila looks at how the mall
shapes, is shaped by, and is in dialogue
with the cultural construction and
performance of class. The Latin
American mall is not simply the North
American/European shopping space but
rather a new transnational institution
that carries the burden of representing
global trends and fast fashion while
serving as a space where people must
perform their purchasing power to gain
entrance, reproducing nationalized
narratives of class.
Dávila’s approach is surprising
because her examples demonstrate
performance theory and how the mall
becomes a performance space. This
book draws its strength from contesting
the way “we tend to dismiss shopping
malls as homogenous and derivative of
the United States . . . producing a
© 2018 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/ciso.12161
totalizing and globalizing ‘postmodern’
culture” (p. 2). Dávila demonstrates how
malls in Bogatá, Columbia are not mere
products of globalization but rather
serve as spaces where (class-stratified)
acts of shopping, dining, family outings,
flash mobs, and certain types of protest
are performed. Acceptable activities are
sorted by class with certain malls
targeting “higher” or “lower” middle-
class patrons based on the use and
arrangement of the physical space.
Readers might be interested in how she
pairs processes of transnationalism and
neo-colonial models of globalization
with Bourdieu’s (1984) ideas of social
capital. Her examples demonstrate a
performance theory lens (after Turner
1969, Sahlins 1981, Butler 1988) as
“middle class” codes of how to dress
and how to act, are learned, practiced,
performed, and reproduced.
While most of the book centers on
the construction and performance of
class in Bogotá, the first two chapters
look at the physical space and
management of the mall in the context
of international assumptions. In Chapter
One, Dávila engages the question of
how, at a fundamental level, malls are
“built” (both financed for construction
and then managed) differently in most of
Latin America in comparison to North
America. Most North American malls
have a single property owner and are
Book Review
managed by real estate investment trusts
(REITs), with storefronts being leased to
tenants. In contrast, a historic lack of
capital to finance construction resulted
in some Latin American malls having
multiple owners, analogous to condos
with private ownership of storefronts.
Despite fundamental differences in how
malls are physically built and owned,
Dávila demonstrates in Chapter Two
that the mall is entangled in a
homogenizing international discourse
that assumes the North American
ownership model. As part of her
research, Dávila was a participant
observer in the International Council of
Shopping Centers (ICSC) John T.
Riordan Global Professional
Development School in Mexico City.
Latin American mall professionals attend
these meetings to learn the “language of
retail” (p. 45) so they can “be certified as
global shopping mall professionals”
(p. 63). This language centers on best
practices regarding management of
common areas, tenant mix, and
maximizing the number of visitors.
These homogenizing global
discourses at the professional level
contrast with the portrait of the mall that
Davila illustrates throughout her book.
Dávila’s work focuses on how the
transnational mall space shapes and
reflects localized constructions of class,
particularly the emergent middle class.
For example, the mall creates tensions
between mall “jobs” that sell
international goods and the informal
economy located outside the secured
mall. International brands and products
strain historic links between the national
production of goods and their local
consumption. The formal mall jobs may
boost tax revenue, but the jobs are
harder and pay less. One mall employee
Dávila spoke with “admitted that she
could be making more money selling
arepas (cornmeal bread) in the street”
(p. 88). Urban spatial separation of class
is reinforced with more affluent malls in
north Bogotá and poorer malls in the
south. This north/south urban divide is
well known to the people Dávila
interviewed, as the upwardly mobile
clearly state that they see no need to
shop in the southern malls. Northern
malls favor shopping as a primary use
and tend to have more expensive,
international chains. In contrast, poorer,
southern malls provide more non-
shopping activities, like eating in the
food courts or attending “free” public
events.
The space of the mall further
reproduces subtler forms of bias based
on appearance, demonstrated by what
people wear. There is a bias against
levantados, or the newly rich, who stand in
contrast to people who have been raised
in their socioeconomic class. Part of that
concern is tied to the complexities of the
drug trade. But concerns about
appearance are also entangled in racial
bias against Afro-Columbians and
Indigenous peoples who tend to be from
the coastal areas. Overt racial categories
are reproduced, but are embedded in
class codes. Race tends to be fixed in
hegemonic cultural preferences that
conflate racial traits and ethnic practices
with class, exemplified by how
“straightened and blow-dried” hair is
part of the middle class/professional
look (p. 128). Negatively viewed
City & Society

subcultures (which may be blended) are Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A

distinguished by the way they dress, in Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste.
particular ńero (well-worn clothes Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge.
associated with the lower urban classes), MA: Harvard University Press.
traqueto (ostentatious dress associated
with narco-traffickers), and clashing Butler, Judith. 1988. “Performative Acts
colorful clothes (associated with coastal and Gender Constitution: An Essay in
ethnic groups and racial stereotypes). Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.”
The way people dress when they go to Theatre Journal, 40 (4), 519–31.
the mall also becomes a performance of
spending power, as shoppers assemble Sahlins, Marshal. 1981. Historical
appropriate outfits to shop in as “‘proof’ Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure in
of purchasing power” (p. 139). El Mall the Early History of the Sandwich Islands.
speaks to processes of making a middle Ann Arbor: University Michigan Press.
class, since malls target a higher
socioeconomic class than the social Turner, Victor. 1969. The Ritual Process:
strata that shops there. The mall thus Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago:
functions as a key space for performing Aldine.
and learning class codes.
The book works as a whole text, but
it also revisits important insights that
facilitate extracting useful chapters.
Nearly every chapter could be pulled
from the book and used in a variety of
classes ranging from economic
anthropology to globalization,
international studies, or science and
technology studies. While Dávila
effectively wields theory and
appropriately applies it to concrete
examples, the theory is unpacked and
accessible, allowing chapters to be easily
understood by undergraduates whilst
containing enough nuance to use in
focused graduate seminars.

Keywords: Latin America; Malls;

Performance; Class

References