Creating Shopping Malls as Postcolonial Spaces through Leisure Time Discourses: The Example of Shopping Malls in Istanbul
Özet
In this article, we will stress the construction of space and leisure time
through the everyday practicing in shopping malls in Istanbul. This analysis
aims to focus on the practice in shopping malls within the discussion of
leisure time and space in order to develop a post-colonial critique in terms of daily life practices. By looking at the five shopping malls in Istanbul, this
work claims that on the one hand experiencing shopping malls leads to the
creation of self-colonizing subjects, and on the other hand creates new ways
of pointing “others” as a “colonial” project. In other words, even if the
subjects of neoliberal world try to practice the modern, Western life style in
search for recognition within the hegemony of Eurocentric ideologies, at the
same time this process creates them as “colonizers” who attempt to ascribe
binary oppositions by referring to class, status and social differences.