Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

We Have Seen It All. At The Mall, Carla Corroto

Sociology Faculty Scholarship

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 …