Approximating new spaces of consumption at the Abasto Shopping Mall, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Abstract

This paper outlines the resources available to researchers interested in approximating the domains of affect, emotion, and assemblage in today's cultural landscapes of consumption. The extended introduction includes a brief review of recent methodological innovations in accessing embodied experience and materiality more generally. Next, I introduce the Abasto Shopping Mall in central Buenos Aires and outline how I approached four months of fieldwork there in 2010 and 2011. I then present the key findings before concluding with a discussion on how to navigate recent empirical and theoretical contributions to the emerging geographies of consumption that are oriented toward affect, emotion, assemblage, and technologies of biopolitical subjectivity.

Keywords:

• subjectivity
• affect
• emotion
• assemblage
• ontology
• walk-along
• biopolitics

Acknowledgements

I thank the Tinker Foundation, the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Arizona, and the Social and Behavioral Sciences Research Institute at the University of Arizona for funding this research. I thank the following people for their inspiration and support: J.P. Jones, Sallie Marston, Liz Oglesby, Daniel Kozak, Suncana Laketa, Mari Galup, Anne Ranek, Pamela Alfonso, Georgia Conover, Valente Soto, Jessica de la Ossa, Nick Crane, Weronika Kusek, Alyson Greiner, and the anonymous reviewers. Finally, I thank all the research participants and the Abasto management for their cooperation.

Notes

1. Shopping malls have been conceptualized as technologies of biopolitical subjectivity in so far as they help reproduce consumer identities and practices through the way they make visitors feel during their visit (see Allen 2006; Miller 2014a).