(Farrell, James J. One Nation Under Goods: Malls and the Seductions of American Shopping. Washington: Smithsonian Books, 2003. Print.)
"Shopping requires a biological being to enter an architectural space outfitted with commercial art and designed to sell artifacts manufactured and distributed in a market economy. SHopping centers are built of solid materials, but the spaces are also socially constructed and regulated by political entities. Our malls reflect and affect personal perceptions, social norms, religious beliefs, ethical values, cultural geography, domestic architecture, foreign policy, and social psychology." (xiii) The mall is a nexus for the mechanics of our entire society. It, like the home, is the physical space upon which we mark out our existence. The mall acts in the same centralizing way that Benjamin's Paris Arcades did. The difference may be our passivity. The Arcades were new and startling. Malls seem a bland, everyday, normative affair.
