A mall for all? Race and public space in post-apartheid Cape Town

Abstract

This article analyses post-apartheid public spaces through social and spatial practices at the Victoria & Alfred (V&A) Waterfront mall in Cape Town. Our empirical evidence suggests that these public spaces involve much more than just consumption patterns, as they sustain and support novel ways of asserting social identities in a new political situation. These changes are, however, quite complex and fraught with ambivalence. Consequently, we scrutinize how race is staged in that space, and how racial diversity produces various kinds of boundaries. We then argue that these urban practices lead us to an understanding of the precarious balance between private and public spaces. We propose the notion of 'publicization' -the process whereby private spaces acquire a more public dimension.

Transposing the Urban to the Mall

“…Malls' common location near traditional markets or poor communities there allows the poor to access them by foot or public transit (Abaza 2001;Sabatini and Arenas 2000). Poor people in Cape Town, South Africa, and Mumbai, India, have gained access to malls over time (Anjaria 2008;Houssay-Hozschuch and Teppo 2009). Even in the United States, developers have created open-air malls or streetscapes adjacent to malls because of enclosed malls' declining popularity (Berger 2005).…”

Socio‐cultural retailing: what can retail marketing learn from this interdisciplinary field?

“…They play a part in making products and services meaningful to us, and are thereby implicated in deciding what counts as "the good life" (Brodin 2007, Peñaloza 1999, Arnould et al 2001. Retail practice and spaces are involved in defining the beauty ideal and gender roles (Pettinger 2004, Pettinger 2005, and they sometimes work to reproduce racism and class oppression (Friend andThompson 2003, Houssay-Holzschuch andTeppo 2009). However, retail practices and spaces can also be used to express love (Miller 1998), work to promote sustainable consumption (Fuentes 2011), or simply be a way to enjoy oneself (Bäckström 2011).…”

“…Malls and other retail spaces are often used as social spaces where relationships are maintained and in which sociability plays an important role (Haytko andBaker 2004, Sandikci andHolt 1998). Also, shopping is often connected to the enactment of gender roles Crewe 1998, Pettinger 2005) and can furthermore be a way to renegotiate ethnic identities and categories , Friend and Thompson 2003, Houssay-Holzschuch and Teppo 2009, Varman and Belk 2012.…”

Target Markets - International Terrorism Meets Global Capitalism in the Mall

“…Especially in the postcolonial context of growing African urbanities, the mall is meant to provide an enclosed and safe space for the bold display and open performance of new "hard-won" modern identities based on new articulations of race, class, and gender relations. 140 In this sense, "the transformation of the mall from a space of goods exchange to a space marked by the consumption of lifestyle, entertainment, and culture has been explained as a change in the way status is socially defined." 141 In such ways, a variety of "cultural and symbolic signifiers are attached to goods so that consumption becomes related to identity and to social stratification."…”