Further, Pahl's depiction of the mall's sacred symbols -- water and light, vegetation, and "words that promise us unity, devotion, love, happiness, and other phenomenon that were once the benefits of traditional religious practices" -- presents a truly unique and important insight into the Western way. But where Pahl falls short is his inability to continue this argument into a piece of social commentary that benefits the anthropologically minded reader. In other words, Pahl makes his observations regarding the importance of the mall as sacred space, supports them through a list of sacred symbols employed by the malls, and then merely gives a short paragraph-long explanation of why the mall fails to meet its spiritual promise. Incredibly, he manages to leave out the sections in which he analyzes the impact of the mall's being a sacred space on Western society, as well as its cultural implications.

That the modern, Western society has adopted the mall as one of its sacred places, a venue in which its ceremonies are held, is of remarkable significance. The incidence suggests not that the mall has used spiritual imagery to fool shoppers into joining a wayward allegiance of the church of commercialism, but instead that the mall reflects the changing values of society. The economy, commercialism, and the perfect-body mentality that Pahl argues the mall promotes for women have become a part...

The mall, then, is this culture's synagogue and holy temple. Although, as Pahl argues, the promises that the mall offers end up being as unfulfilling as the promises that many religions extend, he fails to recognize that -- unfulfilling or not -- the mall is our reality, and our culture has used it as a gleaming golden calf.
Despite the fact that Pahl sticks to the symbolic, rather than the practical in his argument regarding the mall as sacred space, his final paragraph redeems some of his oversights by providing a value-based judgment on the mall as a symbol of the modern, Western culture. Clearly, Pahl believes that for all the mall's imitation, it is not a true expression of spirituality in an accepted spiritual mode. Instead, Pahl acts wisely when he writes: "But today the system is packaged in such a way that souls continue to climb the stairway to heaven, when it is really an escalator, leading nowhere" (467). What Pahl means by this is that the mall's empty promises are simply today's cultural form of empty promises that have been delivered by seemingly spiritual entities since Buddha's era. Thus, Pahl encourages this culture to burn the golden calf in an accurate understanding of the problem of the mall as the spiritual symbol of modern culture.

Works Cited

Pahl, Jon. "The Mall as Sacred Space." (Information for citation not provided)