STRUCTURAL FEATURES OF WEST EDMONTON MALL

This article addresses the question of how West Edmonton Mall (wem) may be a new and distinctive component of retail spatial structure by analysing the retail and service attributes of the mall in the context of (I) Edmonton's retail structure at the regional shopping centre level, and (2) the internal structure of the mall. It is suggested that wem has added a new level to Edmonton's retail hierarchy, rivalling the downtown as the city's primate centre. The analysis of tenant changes leads to the conclusion that these changes tend to reflect a movement from unconventional to conventional tenant mix, and that wem is not much different, other than in sheer size, from most large regional shopping centres. The only unique structural characteristic appears to be the existence of enclaves not usually found in other malls.     

GEOGRAPHIC IMPLICATIONS OF MEGA-MALLS, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO WEST EDMONTON MALL

West Edmonton Mall (wem) is an internationally known shopping mall I leisure complex comprising approximately 4 million sq. ft. of leasable retail and service space. It contains more than 600 shops, plus a hotel and leisure and recreational facilities that are unmatched in any previous shopping centre. The superimposition of a single, massive development on a pre-existing urban structure has created both opportunities and problems for Edmonton, while the emergence of such an urban phenomenon, unprecedented in scale and character, should raise new questions and stimulate new thinking among academics. This introductory article provides a context for the articles that follow by outlining the developmental history of wem and assessing its significance as a mega-ma/ prototype, and by identifying themes to be addressed in detail in the subsequent articles.     

郊区化与美国购物城的兴起

零售业集中反映了城市空间结构的变化,是衡量城市发展水平的一个重要指标,值得专门研究.本文通过对美国郊区化和购物城兴起关系的探讨,发现两者有很深的内在联系.在美国已成为郊区居民为主的情况下,购物城仍将存在下去,并保持兴盛局面.这对美国现代社会生活产生了很大的积极影响,但同时它也强化了居住区隔离现象,加深了美国社会两极分化的鸿沟.     

大型购物中心与幼童母亲的多重身份建构——女性主义、家庭化、公共与私人空间的超越

大型购物中心成为研究现代都市女性身份与社会、空间关系的三棱镜。本文聚焦于"幼童母亲"这一群体,探究其身份认同与购物中心的相互建构过程。通过南京市虹悦城购物中心的研究发现,幼童母亲在购物中心内建立起了多种身份认同,并在身份认同驱使下形成多重实践。这一过程使得幼童母亲在购物空间中突破了传统的公共空间与私人空间的二元划分,借助私密空间的综合性和社会化实现了女性自我个性的释放,实现了社会性别空间的重新定义,同时也重新定义和建构了大型购物中心这一现代都市消费空间。     

WEST EDMONTON MALL AS A TOURIST ATTRACTION

Recent years have seen the mega-phenomenon assume increasing significance in tourism; it is not surprising, therefore, that West Edmonton Mall, the world's first mega-mall, should be viewed as a tourist attraction. This
article discusses the role of shopping as a tourist activity and the opportunity to shop as a facet of the appeal of a location to tourists. It examines the relative attractiveness of West Edmonton Mall as a tourist destination in this context and concludes that it has few outstanding characteristics beyond its unique size and range of leisure facilities. The permanence of its appeal beyond the regional scale is therefore unikely. The long-term appeal of shopping and related facilities is discussed in the context of a model of tourism development.     

国外对零售业及其附生——衍生的营业性娱乐场所的空间关系研究

零售业及其附生-衍生的营业性娱乐场所是城市居民日常生活(闲暇娱乐)行为的四大场所之一,零售业中附生-衍生的娱乐场所的类型、结构与空间模式是揭示城市社会-生活空间质量的重要方面,本文从城市社会地理学以及人类文化生态学等多学科的研究角度,分析与总结国外学者对零售业及其附生-衍生的营业性娱乐场所的研究现状、内容以及其在城市中的空间作用与(社会)空间关系。     

The place of children among the Guji of southern Ethiopia: school,work and play

This article explores everyday life among Guji children in southern Ethiopia and the place of children in an intergenerational social order. Based on data generated through ethnographic fieldwork among the Guji, we show that work, school and play are significant and intertwined social practices. Local knowledge and skills of importance for sustainable livelihood are acquired through children's participation in these different social practices. Oral tradition represents a key element of local knowledge and social practices in everyday life. However, political and social changes, such as settlement policies and the introduction of schools, affect the dynamic interconnectedness of these practices, as well as relations between different generations. These changes also have implications for local knowledge and local livelihoods.     

The Socio‐Nature of Local Organic Food

Abstract: The concept of socio‐nature asserts that social relations are inherently ecological and that ecological relations are inherently social. This paper examines how, and with what consequences, discourses and practices of support for local and organic food reflect this idea. It argues that proponents of local organic agriculture view the food they promote as simultaneously social and the product of human labor. However, advocates’ understanding of the concept is partial and constrained by social privilege. It does not extend to industrial agriculture or paid farm labor. The literature on socio‐nature coheres around the revelation that what is understood as natural is also social and vice versa. In contrast, this paper takes a new approach, examining socio‐nature as a practice‐shaping discourse already embedded in social life. Investigating the on‐the‐ground ideological work performed by the concept also allows for assessment of its political consequences.     

The critical intimacies of walking in the Abasto Shopping mall,Buenos Aires,Argentina

In recent years, scholars have focused on how affective life becomes implicated in biopolitical interventions in a variety of spaces, including spaces of consumption. Less has been said about how the emotional domain also becomes a space of biopolitics. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at a mall in Buenos Aires, this paper attends to this link and outlines a methodology that generates insight into the layers of intimacy that help shape these social and political spaces. What I am calling images of critical intimacy point to how these biopolitical spaces may be operating today and also what their limits appear to be.     

COPING WITH MEGA-MALL DEVELOPMENT: AN URBAN PLANNING PERSPECTIVE ON WEST EDMONTON MALL

The development of West Edmonton Mall is presented as a case study in the problem of coping with unexpected, large-scale departures from authorized plans - in this instance, the plan for the new suburban community of West Jasper Place. The main features of the plan are described and the practical consequences of permitting the mall to be built are assessed. It is concluded that Edmonton's conventional planning instruments were unable to respond effectively to the challenge posed by West Edmonton Mall, because the local planning system did not make adequate provision for the politics of plan implementation.     

Challenging the grammar of difference: Benoy Kumar Sarkar,global mobility and anti-imperialism around the First World War

The new imperial history has advanced our understanding of empires in many ways: it enhanced a networked interpretation of empires, brought space back into the discussion, and suggested a fresh reading of imperial careers to comprehend early forms of global inter-dependencies. This article discusses selected aspects of the life and work of Benoy Kumar Sarkar (1887–1949), a Bengali social scientist and political activist, to illustrate that anti-imperial biographies were simultaneously rooted in local as well as transnational spaces. They thus connected national struggles with globe-spanning processes. Biographies like this are underacknowledged in their meaning for how empires functioned and failed, and in their potential for understanding transnational actors. Sarkar’s efforts to challenge the legitimacy of the British Empire were the result of his life in a transnational social field, which was equally shaped by his extensive experience abroad and his continuous rootedness in local Bengali affairs. Sarkar’s anti-imperialism was enhanced by the mobility structures of the British Empire and resulted in new constellations of imperial, cosmopolitan, local and regional orientations and attachments. In this view, anti-imperialism was less the result of local struggles but of life practices reaching beyond the borders of the empire and a high awareness of acting in a global context that located its protagonists in numerous social and spatial contexts.     

Managing Marginalization: Young French-North Africans and Local Associations

This article is about associational life among French-North Africans in the Paris suburbs. Associational life has been seen as an important means for excluded groups to exercise agency, especially in the two following bodies of theory: new citizenship and transnational studies literature. This article contrasts these influential theoretical perspectives with empirical research on youth engagement in associations. I argue that both the literature on new citizenship and transnational studies tends to focus our attention too much on heroic notions of a) new participative democracy and b) first-generation global networks of immigrants. As a result, other processes of locally embedded marginalization of ‘second-’ and ‘third-generation’ immigrant populations, such as in Paris’ banlieues and local association networks, can be overlooked. This article therefore takes as its empirical focus, research carried out on the relationship between young people of North African origin and local associations in Aubervilliers. Rather than a patchwork of participative local democracy or a ‘breeding ground’ for transnational immigrant agency, my fieldwork reveals that associations can often be half-hearted antidotes to social disenfranchisement and, sometimes, actual mechanisms which maintain exclusion.     

Cultural shock of high-speed rail: Evidence from social trust

The opening of high-speed rail (HSR), as an exogenous shock, has had a profound and complex effect on social life. This study analyzes the effect of the opening of HSR on social trust. Results show that the opening of HSR promotes social trust. Mechanism analysis showed that although the opening of HSR accelerated population mobility and decreased trust in strangers, economic growth and improvement of local social issues mitigated the negative effects of its opening. In addition, our results also show that individuals turn to trust in their parents, neighbors, and doctors. Considering the potential endogeneity problem, instrumental variable and difference-in-differences estimators consistently indicated the promoting effect of the HSR opening on trust. Heterogeneity analysis showed that the opening of HSR had a greater effect on female, urban residents, younger groups, and married people. Last, cities with larger populations and tourist cities were more vulnerable to shocks.     

MEGA-CHAINING, CORPORATE CONCENTRATION, AND THE MEGA-MALLS

This article provides a framework for the evaluation of West Edmonton Mall within the broader context of the national regional shopping centre system. A particular focus is placed on the tenant mix and functional structure for those 37 shopping centres with a minimum gross leasable area of 750 000 sq. ft The analysis illustrates the similarity in the degree of chaining and corporate ownership in these major shopping facilities and describes their structural characteristics. The article concludes by evaluating both the development of the mega-mall phenomenon and speculates about the future position of these malls in the retail system.     

东爪哇韩氏家族：企业精神与政治舞台（18—19世纪）

本文通过对韩氏家族两个支派的华文和马来文族谱和相关地方文史资料的研究,分析阐述了18世纪中叶到18世纪末爪哇韩氏家族的人物关系、社会结构、融合情况及其在当地经济中的作用,旨在更好地了解东南亚华人移民家族的融合与文化适应模式。     

Heritage and rural gentrification in Spain: the case of Santiago Millas

Although gentrification has been mostly understood as an urban phenomenon, the permanent establishment of urban dwellers in rural areas is becoming a widespread trend across the world. Despite its relevance to postindustrial societies, rural gentrification has been largely overlooked by heritage scholars, and has been explored very little in the context of Spain. In this article, I examine the relationship between heritage and rural gentrification through the case study of Santiago Millas, a village located in the Maragatería region of Spain. Based on long-term ethnographic engagement with different actors (newcomers, local residents, and public officials), I examine a specific instance of the globalizing phenomenon of rural gentrification, highlighting the key role heritage plays in this phenomenon, including (1) the impact on local governmentalities based on heritage discourse; (2) the refurbishing of houses and changes in the social spaces of villages; and (3) the transformation of social life and rituals into metacultural discourses of heritage. I emphasize the urgency to carry out more research in order to improve our understanding of the complex and multifaceted phenomenon of rural gentrification from a heritage perspective.     

SOCIAL COST MINIMIZATION: A NATIONAL POLICY APPROACH TO THE PROBLEMS OF DISTRESSED ECONOMIC REGIONS*

This paper makes a distinction between output maximizing and cost minimizing approaches to national economic policy. The paper argues that because the benefits of economic activity and its cost are frequently conferred upon distinct groups in society, it is not automatically true that output maximization is the best strategy, as is presently assumed. This result is especially true when the problems of distressed economic regions are the focus of our concern. The national and multi-national firms which make decisions pertaining to the economic life of local communities make those decisions not on the basis of the costs and benefits to the community, but with regard to their private balance sheet. As a result, it frequently happens that communities of individuals must bear social costs far in excess of the private gains to the firms in question. From a policy standpoint, this is not an efficient use of our social and economic resources. In the absence of any type of comprehensive economic planning a rational market-oriented economic strategy would be one which seeks to minimize social costs.     

文化冲突与跨国迁移群体的适应策略——以南非中国新移民群体为例

论文运用田野调查的方法,选择南非的中国新移民作为研究对象,介绍了20世纪90年代以来南非中国新移民群体的概况,阐释了中国新移民在南非遭遇的文化冲突以及他们的适应策略。研究发现,中国新移民在基本价值、家庭观念、消费观念等方面与南非人有明显的冲突,新移民群体对＂南非文化＂持一种＂保持距离＂的态度。具体体现在居住区域、社会交往和通婚等方面。同时,同质性强的中国新移民身处介于同质与异质之间的社会空间,对南非文化仍有明显的隔阂。     

The Sunday morning journey to church considered as a form of ‘micro-pilgrimage’

Using mixed methods data, the social significance and narrative of local journeys to church on a Sunday morning are examined and reframed as a form of pilgrimage. Pilgrimage studies over the last 30 years have criticized the concept proposed by Turner and Turner of pilgrimage as entirely opposite and peripheral to social structures and relation. Recent literature has reinterpreted Turner and Turner’s terminology of ‘liminality’ and ‘communitas’, developing these ideas to identify the continuities that remain between much of everyday life and contemporary pilgrimage. Furthermore, there has been a shift in focus, prompted by interest in mobilities, from pilgrimage centres to recognize the significance of the journey to such centres. This paper advances the discussion further to argue that local scale journeys to church should be considered as a form of micro-pilgrimage: local journeys to church services that can form part of a break from daily social structures to be used to prepare oneself for the act of worship or immersion in the social relations based in the church. The concept of micro-pilgrimages therefore recognizes that these journeys can, like longer pilgrimages, contain qualities of liminality and communitas that combine social and religious significance and meaning for the pilgrim.     

The Ordinary City

As debates on globalization have progressed from an earlier phase in which commentators saw the intensification of world-scale flows and processes as the negation of local identities and autonomies, the city has been 'rediscovered' as the powerhouse of the globalized economy. Against the view that questions, for example, the continued specificity of the urban in an era increasingly mediated by locationally liberating, advanced telecommunications and rapid transport networks, some strands of urban research assert that cities are becoming more important as the key creative, control and cultural centres within globalizing economic, cultural and social dynamics. Building on these strands, this paper evaluates the assets that cities and metropolitan regions provide in an era of globalization. It attempts to develop an alternative perspective on the city based on the idea that contemporary urban life is founded on the heterogeneity of economic, social, cultural and institutional assets, and concludes by using this perspective to develop implications for urban policy and the quest for social and territorial justice.