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ABSTRACT
The shopping mall entered Central Asia's commercial sector as a result of the economic transformation of post-Soviet space. Constructed near the centre of the city, the shopping mall overwrites the urban landscape, dominating it as a symbol of modernity. It functions as a gateway of global consumerist culture to the Eurasian steppe. Using the MEGA shopping mall in Aktobe, in western Kazakhstan, as an example, this article shows that the building acts as a stage for the construction of a new social and cultural space. This study focuses on the ways in which young women interact with the mall's spaces. The mall turns out to be a playground not only for children, but also for the whole younger generation, who come to this unique place to see and be seen. The mall became a hot spot of youth culture in the post-socialist worker's city by offering more than a mere shelter from dust and snow storms on the steppe. The available amenities made it a favourite place for meeting, consuming and dreaming. Young women especially are attracted to MEGA to experience the newest fashions and build social relationships.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Nauryz, the spring festival, is a major holiday shared by many ethnicities along the Silk Road, from the Kurds in the west to the Uighurs in the east. It is celebrated at the spring equinox. In Kazakhstan, Nauryz is recognized as a public holiday on 21–24 March.
2. In Kazakhstan, the anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany is celebrated on 9 May. (When the surrender document was signed at Berlin-Karlshorst, in the evening of 8 May, it was already after midnight in Moscow.) The Central Asian republics maintained Victory Day as a national holiday after their independence.
3. The Commonwealth of Independent States is a regional organization of former Soviet republics.
4. Dacha can be translated as ‘summer home'. Beginning in the Brezhnev period, workers were given small plots of land for recreation and gardening, which was a tool for backup supply in cases of shortages. In the post-socialist period owners partially began to improve their structure and use dachas as permanent homes.
5. The boom of Kazakhstan's GNP was also reflected in the regions, especially in the oil-rich western parts of the country. As Ursulenko (Citation2010, 4) showed, the regional income spent on consumption (per capita) in Aktobe Province more than tripled between 1999 and 2008, to 12,000 tenge (in 2008, 1 US dollar corresponded to 120 tenge).
6. MEGA official homepage, http://MEGAmall.ru/belaya_dacha/company/, accessed 13 November 2014.
7. Russian RIA-news agency, http://ria.ru/economy/20140918/1024674064.html.
8. http://almaty.megacenter.kz/eng/about_mega, accessed 8 May, 2013.
9. All names of informants changed.
10. Kazakhs continue to trace their descent to clans to the present day. The clans split in the sixteenth to nineteenth century into clan federations (Small, Middle and Large Horde) for political, juristic and security issues. For further information, see Krader (Citation1963).