Exploring Mall As a Producer and Product of the Spatialisation of India’S New Middle Class Author(S): Kulwinder Kaur Source: Explorations, ISS E-Journal, Vol
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explorations Vol. 5 (1), April 2021 E-journal of the Indian Sociological Society Article: Exploring Mall as a Producer and Product of the Spatialisation of India’s New Middle Class Author(s): Kulwinder Kaur Source: Explorations, ISS e-journal, Vol. 5 (1), April 2021, pp. 4-26 Published by: Indian Sociological Society 4 explorations Vol. 5 (1), April 2021 E-journal of the Indian Sociological Society Exploring Mall as a Producer and Product of the Spatialisation of India’s New Middle Class --- Kulwinder Kaur Abstract Following ‘the spatial turn’ in urban studies, I propose that sociology of India needs to revise its understanding of social stratification by extending its existing focus from the ‘enactment’ and ‘performance’ of class in cultural and political domains to studying how space is equally, if not more, constitutive of identity and difference. Towards this end, this paper forefronts the spatial in understanding how the class differentiations are hierarchised in urban space. It, thus, explores the shopping mall as both a producer as well as a product of the ‘spatialisation’ of India’s new middle class as articulated in the changing ‘spatial practices’ of malls. Drawing from ethnographic research in Delhi and Gurgaon, the paper argues that the materiality of mall is supported by the heterogeneity of middle class consumers who aid the production of a socio-spatial hierarchy as they stop their patronage of old malls when bigger and newer malls enter into urban space with their promise of a better consumer experience – both sensuous and symbolic. Key words: Mall, Middle Class, Spatial Hierarchy, Spatialisation, Stratification Foregrounding the ‘Spatial’: The Rational The second half of the 20th century marked the onset of a ‘spatial turn’ in social sciences and humanities. Consequently, space, instead of time, became the predominant category of knowledge production. This shift from time to space is rightly claimed as a ‘paradigm shift …spanning far beyond the academic disciplines of geography’ (Carter, Pugh, Thien, Marres, Featherstone & Griffin, 2009, p. 579), so much so that ‘over the past half a century, space has infiltrated most of the social sciences and the humanities: sociology, anthropology, philosophy, history, psychology and psychoanalysis, literary criticism, and legal studies’ (Blank & Rosen-Zvi, 2010, p. 3). This can be attributed to the works of several well-known scholars and philosophers of the 20th century i who also inspired the adoption of the spatial approach in the study of Indian society and 5 explorations Vol. 5 (1), April 2021 E-journal of the Indian Sociological Society culture. Coincidentally, in India, the beginning of the 21st century also marked the onset of ‘the urban turn’ (Prakash, 2002) owing to the phenomena of increasing urbanisation on the one hand, and the advent of neo-liberal capitalism on the other, both of which were driven by cities. The past two decades in India have, thus, witnessed the popularisation of urban studies in a big way, be it in academia, research organisations or the policy think tanks. While this urban turn brought the much needed attention to the erstwhile neglected urban condition in India, the dominant perspective of study remained structural or cultural. This was especially true in case of sociology of India. This paper intends to correct this sociological neglect in the context of class as a form of stratification in India which, till recently, had neglected the ‘spatial’, or at best viewed it as a subtext of the ‘cultural’. Not that the spatial perspective needs any endorsement, yet it would be pertinent to recapitulate that in social theory, [V]irtually all the fundamental concepts identifying social institutions have an important spatial component. It is not possible to think about community, neighbourhood, environment, household, work, school, state, or labor markets, to name a few, without at least implicitly assuming their spatial character… Relations of power, structures of inequality, and practices of domination and subordination are embedded in spatial design and relations. Thus spatial arrangements are both products and sources of other forms of inequality (Tickamyer, 2000, p. 807). Drawing from the conjoining of the ‘spatial turn’ and the ‘urban turn’, this paper foregrounds the ‘spatial’ in understanding the ways in which class differentiations are hierarchisedii in urban space. In my observation, sociology of India has come a long way in recognising and analysing the growing importance of class and its performance as a basis of social stratification, but its focus has largely remained political or cultural, much to the neglect of the ‘spatial’ wherein class identities are embedded in space. In other words, there is a need to evolve a ‘clear understanding of where and how stratifying cultural practices are emplaced and the ways in which status hierarchies may also be expressed as spatial hierarchies’ (Richer, 2015, p. 348). Shopping malls as the ‘citadels of consumption’ (Ritzer, 6 explorations Vol. 5 (1), April 2021 E-journal of the Indian Sociological Society 1999) make for an ideal spatial choice for this purpose. Towards this end, the paper examines the internal heterogeneities within the new middle class by subjecting a set of carefully chosen malls to a spatial analysis. The study, therefore, explores the shopping mall as both a producer as well as a product of the spatialisation of the middle class. However, malls are not alone in this production process as Dávila (2016) has shown in her study of El Mall in Bogotá. The mall consumers, too, are active in this process as they exercise their ‘judgments of taste’ in giving patronage to certain malls while ignoring others. The representation and socio-spatial hierarchisation is therefore a co-constitutive process between the malls and their patrons. The emerging spatial hierarchies are, however, far from stable. Rather there is fluidity across time and space that this paper seeks to capture ethnographically through a long standing observation of the selected malls in Delhi and Gurgaon. The Mall: A Frivolous Subject or a Serious Epistemological Category? In the past two decades, the shopping mall has become a regular feature of urban landscape in India, and yet there is a lack of scholarly attention commensurate with its proliferation. Till recently, the Indian mall figured, at best, as an auxiliary category in the critical accounts of ‘neo-liberal restructuring of urban space’ (Banerjee-Guha, 2002) or in the debates on ‘the global city’ (Dupont, 2011). Sociology of India, perhaps, perceived it as too frivolous a subject to merit scholarly attention in its own right; or else viewed it as an embodied space of ‘mazza or play, fun and pleasure’ – which as Anjaria and Anjaria rightly point out are regrettably ‘either overlooked’ or not given any attention unless ‘seen as symbols of something more important’ (2020, p. 232). However, it became increasingly difficult to ignore these ‘citadels of consumption’ after liberalisation due to the rise of India’s new middle class (Fernandes, 2006) and ensuing explosion of the real estate and retail boomiii that occurred between the years 2007 and 2013. Malls articulated a growing demand by the new middle class for an array of consumer goods, services and lifestyles that were suddenly made available and accessible after India experienced unprecedented economic growth following the onset of liberalisation in the 1990s. In fact, the new middle class and its consumer practices attracted a lot of sociological attention but most of these accounts were written within performative or cultural frameworks. The urban spaces, such as shopping malls, that 7 explorations Vol. 5 (1), April 2021 E-journal of the Indian Sociological Society materialised these practices, were only an incidental presence in these accounts, devoid of any subjectivity. On the contrary, in other parts of the globe, especially in societies characterised by what may be called as ‘liquid modernity’ (Bauman, 2000), malls have been instrumental in flagging very serious epistemological concerns. For instance, as underlined in another paperiv, malls in Europe and North America are central to the discourse on the ‘privatisation’ and ‘the end of public space’ (Sorkin, 1992; Mitchell, 1995; Zukin, 1998; Voyce, 2003; Low, 2010); the sites of surveillance, order and control of consuming subjects (Koskella, 2000; Staeheli & Mitchell, 2006); shopping as a ‘gendered activity’ (Mathews et al., 2000); the ‘feminisation of flâneur’ (Abaza, 2001); segregation of publics (Erkip, 2003); civic life in the suburban community (Goss, 1993); and the discourse on the ‘right to the city’ (Harvey, 2003) among others. On a generous note, the paucity of literature in the Indian context may be conceded given the fact that the origin of malls in India is quite a recent historical occurrence. Additionally, the context of their origin and development, too, is quite different from the social history and evolution of malls in other parts of the world (Kaur, 2017). As a global phenomenon, malls have traversed a long historical trajectory, having evolved into this current spatial format from their earliest prototype – the ancient ‘Greek Agora’ to the ‘Eastern Bazaars’, ‘Parisian Arcades’, modern ‘Department Stores’, the post-world war-II ‘American Suburban Mall’ and the Canadian late 20th century’s ‘Regional Shopping and Leisure Centers’ (Coleman, 2006). In the global discourse, the mall features as a very significant spatial text