The Center Cannot Hold: Consuming the Utopian Marketplace

Abstract

This article draws upon the Utopian studies literature to integrate two strands of contemporary consumer research, the study of place and space and the analysis of consumer/marketer relations. Based on a longitudinal study of a festival shopping mall, we provide an emergent theory of how the Utopian marketplace is experienced, a theory that hinges around three interlinked conceptual categories: sensing displace, creating playspace, and performing artscape, which are subverted by the center management's maladroit refreshment of the retail offer. The relevance of this theorization for place-based scholarship, together with its implications for researchers of consumer/marketer relations, is also discussed.