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Dear colleagues, My PhD literature review is now well underway. However, I've been struggling a bit with an intellectual position for the thesis on production and consumption of new retail environments in Glasgow focussing on one particular shopping centre. I've been thinking about my own survey data and focus group transcripts and there appears to be sufficient evidence for theories of consumer sovereignty in relation to everyday shopping not least becasue I have came across different modes of consumption within the same shopping centre. I agree that consumption has moved well beyond the isolated act of purchase but in my work it doesn't have to include spending any money at all. These more passive modes of consumption include practices such as 'people watching' or even using the shopping centre as a throughfare. This also gives some creedence to immaterial social geographies rather than a purely material culture approach Thus, a structuralist reading of the mall wouldn't really do my thesis (becasue it focuses on the general rather than the particular) any real justice hence I've been thinking about poststructuralism as a possible lens for reading the mall. Even a well serviced and tightly regualted retail space seems to present opportunites for different modes of consumption and the playing out of multiple indentities. The problem is that most of the poststructuralist material seems to focus on language and I don't really want to go down the route of discourse analysis. Do you happen know of anyone (except Marcus Doel) who has attempted to apply the ideas of postructuralism to the spaces of shopping malls or do you think that such a position on the above isn't feasible? I appreciate your time ragarding this matter. Gareth Rice