The Center Cannot Hold: Consuming the Utopian Marketplace: Figure 1
- 1 September 2005
- journal article
- Published by Oxford University Press (OUP) in Journal of Consumer Research
- Vol. 32 (2), 311-323
- https://doi.org/10.1086/432240
Abstract
This article draws upon the utopian studies literature to integrate two strands of contemporary consumer research, the study of place and space and the analysis of consumer/marketer relations. Based on a longitudinal study of a festival shopping mall, we provide an emergent theory of how the utopian marketplace is experienced, a theory that hinges around three interlinked conceptual categories: sensing displace, creating playspace, and performing artscape, which are subverted by the center management's maladroit refreshment of the retail offer. The relevance of this theorization for place-based scholarship, together with its implications for researchers of consumer/marketer relations, is also discussed.Keywords
This publication has 25 references indexed in Scilit:
- Adversaries of Consumption: Consumer Movements, Activism, and IdeologyJournal of Consumer Research, 2004
- The Protean Quality of Subcultural Consumption: An Ethnographic Account of Gay ConsumersJournal of Consumer Research, 2002
- Why Do Brands Cause Trouble? A Dialectical Theory of Consumer Culture and BrandingJournal of Consumer Research, 2002
- Themed flagship brand stores in the new millennium: theory, practice, prospectsJournal of Retailing, 2002
- The Social Uses of Advertising: An Ethnographic Study of Adolescent Advertising AudiencesJournal of Consumer Research, 1999
- The Mountain Man Myth: A Contemporary Consuming FantasyJournal of Consumer Research, 1998
- Speaking of Fashion: Consumers' Uses of Fashion Discourses and the Appropriation of Countervailing Cultural MeaningsJournal of Consumer Research, 1997
- Subtopia in Gateshead: The MetroCentre as a Cultural FormTheory, Culture & Society, 1990
- A Sociocultural Analysis of a Midwestern American Flea MarketJournal of Consumer Research, 1990
- Heaven on Earth: Consumption at Heritage Village, USAJournal of Consumer Research, 1989