This paper examines Chapter Two of Arlene Dávila's El Mall: The Spatial and Class Politics of Shopping Malls in Latin America, focusing on the relationship between Latin American retail professionals and North American shopping mall industry organizations like the ICSC. The paper argues that Dávila challenges the naive assumption that Latin American and North American mall operators function in fundamentally separate ways, demonstrating instead that capital and culture are deeply intertwined. It also raises critical questions about the long-term viability of shopping mall expansion in Latin America given the rise of e-commerce and neoliberal development pressures.
The main argument that Arlene Dávila makes in Chapter Two of El Mall: The Spatial and Class Politics of Shopping Malls in Latin America is that Latin American professionals are looking to the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) for guidance on education and training in the shopping mall sector. A naive assumption underlying some of this instruction, however, is that Latin Americans and North Americans operate in fundamentally separate ways that are not meaningfully interrelated. What Dávila demonstrates is that instructors are not attuned to what scholars have uncovered — namely, that "the intimate and the economic and business realms are never mutually exclusive or in direct opposition to each other and that capital always draws strength from and reproduces itself through close-knit relations" (p. 66).
The main components of this argument are that: (1) shopping malls have truly become international; (2) Latin American professionals are eager for training; and (3) those professionals do not view themselves as operating fundamentally differently from their North American counterparts. These three points are explained by a series of interlocking themes that have emerged over the past decade in Latin America and on the world stage.
At the heart of Dávila's analysis is the truly international character of the shopping mall and the desire of local managers, retailers, political leaders, and investors to work together to expand and develop this sector in new markets. Places like Latin America — Brazil in particular — are only now catching up with the shopping mall boom that occurred in the United States in the 1950s. Having largely exhausted growth opportunities in the U.S. domestic market, developers and investors turned first to Europe and are now finding welcoming partners in emerging markets such as India, Asia, and Latin America. In this sense, the shopping mall has become a genuinely global phenomenon.
In Latin America, professionals are actively seeking guidance on how to proceed with shopping mall management, development, maintenance, expansion, and retail operations. The ICSC provides them the opportunity to receive instruction and to network with industry peers. Some of the education being offered, however, rests on a misguided perspective — one in which individuals from outside the United States are assumed to hold cultural approaches that are incompatible with or that nullify North American methods. In reality, Latin American professionals are seeking precisely an understanding of these methods and models in order to apply them more effectively in their own national contexts.
"Challenging false U.S.–Latin America cultural divide"
"E-commerce disruption and neoliberal development risks"
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