"Once-Upon-A-Time in the Commodity World: An Unofficial Guide to Mall of America"

"Once-Upon-A-Time in the Commodity World: An Unofficial Guide to Mall of America" (March 1999)
By Jon Goss (from Annals)

Synopsis: Argues that the Mall of America "narrates out collective loss of a natural world of innocence and immanence, and promises restoration in a utopian community of consumption" (45). In fact a sense of loss and longing seems to subconsciously drive a lot of the fantasies found there. Goss spent ten days doing "semiotic reading and participant observation" at the Mall of America, mostly reading the mall as a text. Consumption depends on a faith that the objects possess some kind of power which will then be transfered to the purchaser - i.e. sexual desirability, prestige, status, etc - and this falls in line with the anthro concept of magic systems (56). He finds that the main tropes within the mall are: movement and mobility, memory and magic, nature, primitives, enchantment, and heritage. Says "the commodity is not a souvenir of the real experience of a past or distant reality, but a memento of the retail experience in which its possibility is imagined" (70). "The task is to recognize how the age-old fears of obsolescence - nature dies, children grow up, primitives are 'civilized,' and out heritage is lost - and dreams of immanence, live in the commodity aesthetic, not to eliminate them as so much 'false consciousness,' but to liberate them and live them more fully in really meaningful consumption" (72).

Interesting Specifics:

This article has a great bibliography.

This is one of my favorites - I love it!

Says the contemporary malls are what Foucault calls " 'heterotopias of compensation,' real and discrete 'counter-sites' where multiple images of ideal times and places combine to create an illusion of a world standing outside of everyday life" (45).

Shopping malls are examples of "hypernarrated spaces (Boyer, 1994), providing texts and contents for commemoration through which are narrated the loss and restoration of a thematic meaning" (47). It attempts to unite "individual biography with natural and cultural history" via the commodity (47). [This reminds me of the Buffalo Bill book on Janet's list - that BBWWS was combining personal and historical memory through the experience of the consumer spectacle].

Interacts With:

Jennifer Price (Flight Maps)
Walter Benjamin
Bakhtin's concept of the chronotype - "generic spaciotemporal structures where stories take place" (50)
In its view of objects as things imbided with meaning and embodying a sense of loss, this fits with most of the material culture books on Jeff's list, like The Meaning of Things, and On Longing, etc. Basically anything that looks at objects as having a special almost talisman-esque power that is passed on to its owner/possessor/giver.
This book does not engage with various debates over the artificiality of the mall or consumer culture, or with the hollow shallowness of consumer culture in general. Rather, it is asking us to look deeper into the meaning behind the objects and what kind of need they must represent.
Doesn't like the high culture critique of authentic vs. inauthentic experiences, and feel discussion of that (i.e. consumption as inauthentic) just reproduces the dichotomy what consumption revolves around (49).

"The America's before and after 1492;" and "The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492"

"The America's before and after 1492," By Karl Butzer (Sep. 1992); and "The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492," By William M. Denevan, (Sep. 1992)
Both from Annals


Butzer Synopsis: Both articles written to celebrate 500th anniversary of Columbus's encounter with the New World, and both are designed to dispel the myth that the New World was a pristine land when Columbus reached it. Native Americans of course did alter the environment and utilize many different methods of agriculture. Also, Euro diseases wiped out about 90% of Native population, paving the way for a totally new colonial landscape. However, there is not much evidence of European land damage prior to the 1700s, and says that Euros actually did have a history of agricultural conservation. Therefore, we should really be asking when and why Euros gave up their more conservationist techniques. Essentially, this article is a review of many works that ask us to question long-held assumptions about the condition of North American land before and after Euro contact.


Denevan Synopsis: Indians of course did alter the landscape, but "the landscape of 1750 was more 'pristine' (less humanized) than that of 1492" due to the demise of Indian populations from Euro diseases, etc (370). The hemisphere-wide Indian population was probably only 30% of what it was in 1492. Furthermore, most Euro descriptions of the land didn't occur until 1750-1850, at which time the environment had had a chance to "recover" and grow back - appearing "pristine." Environments are always in flux; change comes and goes and new environments are imposed upon "pristine" landscapes.


Interacts With: Cronon

The Making of the American Landscape

The Making of the American Landscape (1990)
Edited by Michael P. Conzen

Synopsis: Tis book is a compilation of essays which survey the American landscape via some major historical forces that have shaped it. It focuses on "themes about clusters of related landscape processes set in a broadly historical and regional framework"(6). Moves chronologically to some degree, but is more thematic. It includes essays on climate and natural features, immigrant and colonist legacies (especially the vast Spanish imprint and the way it has been downplayed), plantations, planning and the grid pattern, forest-clearing, industrialization and urbanization, cars, weather, and vernacular houses (especially the ways in which buildings reflect adaptations to lands and climate, as well as cultural beliefs). The overall argument holding these essays together is loose, but is basically that culture leaves its imprint on the landscape, and thus meaning and a layered cultural history lie all around us.

Interesting Specifics:
[Lots of Steve's Intro to AMS material seems to derive from this].
Chapter 17 on landscapes of the wealthy is interesting.

Interacts With:
Building Suburbia, The Modern Urban Landscape,

Building Suburbia: Green Fields And Urban Growth, 1820-2000

Building Suburbia: Green Fields And Urban Growth, 1820-2000 (2003)
By Dolores Hayden

Synopsis: This book is a history of suburban development from 1820-2000, with the theme that the suburbs represent the triple dream of "house plus land [nature] plus community" (8). The book looks at what she deems to be seven historic patterns of suburban neighborhood: 1) Borderlands (1820s - ; picturesque style ala Andrew Jackson Downing with a focus on landscape and lots of plants, flowers; Catherine Beecher and the idealization of women's sphere and sacred domesticity); 2) Picturesque Enclaves (1850s - ; "were the most important secular manifestations of a wider communitarian movement whose adherents believed that building a model community in a natural setting led the reform of society" (45); Llewellyn Park, NJ (1857), Riverside, IL (1869, but Frederick Law Olmstead); 3) Streetcar Buildouts (1870s-1910s; followed transport lines yet still close to center; big push for homeownership); 4) Mail-Order and Self-Built Suburbs (1910-; rise of pre-cut catalogue houses ala Sears; increased zoning and planning; federal involvement in the 1930s); 5) Sitcom Suburbs (1940s - ; FHA loans; racism and sexism; Levittown and Lakewood; cult of consumption and domesticity); 6) Edge Nodes (1950s - ; rise of strip malls and car-centric living; Interstate Highway Act; rise of malls; Title VII New Towns like Columbia, MD; chain stores and big boxes; 7) Rural Fringes (rise of telecommuting and the dispersal of homes; rise of "valhallas" - fancy nature-infused spots). Ends with a brief discussion of nostalgia and futurism as embodied by Seaside and Celebration (nostalgia), and "smart houses" and digital houses (futurism) in which technology will play an even bigger role. We should value older suburbs as well, and the search for more democratic forms in the future will be political.

Interacts With:
The Celebration Chronicles, The Modern Urban Landscape, Brave New Neighborhoods, Behind the Gates,
Is a very straightforward and non-political survey of suburban history in the same spirit as Relph's Modern Urban Landscape. Hayden of course does have a little bit of preservationist's bent, esp. at the end.