2015
2015-11-03
10.17192/meta.2015.5.3642
urn:nbn:de:hebis:04-0003-2015-103-36429
keine Angabe
A Periphery Becomes a Center? Shopping Malls as Symbols of Modernity in Iraqi Kurdistan
Being labelled and framed as a remote periphery of Iraq, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq is transforming since 2003 into a center attracting investments worth billions of dollars. Investigating this transformation, I scrutinize one of the visible outcomes of the investments, namely shopping malls, as examples and symbols of "modernity" and "progress." The recently built shopping malls are thereby analyzed as the built materialization and symbols of neoliberal transformation and socio-economic change. Engaging with representatives of shopping malls as well as with the experiences of young female shopping-mall-goers, it will be illustrated how modernity and progress is framed within the Kurdish nationalist narrative and how this is taken up by young Kurdish female mall-goers. Thus, it will be contended that a historical narrative of past sufferings comes to legitimize the new liberal "freedoms" that are available through the full connection to and participation of Iraqi Kurdistan in the capitalist economic world system.
Iraqi Kurdistan
Space
Shopping Malls
Periphery
Gender Relations
Neoliberalism
Iraqi Kurdistan
Space
Being labelled and framed as a remote periphery of Iraq, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq is transforming since 2003 into a center attracting investments worth billions of dollars. Investigating this transformation, I scrutinize one of the visible outcomes of the investments, namely shopping malls, as examples and symbols of "modernity" and "progress." The recently built shopping malls are thereby analyzed as the built materialization and symbols of neoliberal transformation and socio-economic change. Engaging with representatives of shopping malls as well as with the experiences of young female shopping-mall-goers, it will be illustrated how modernity and progress is framed within the Kurdish nationalist narrative and how this is taken up by young Kurdish female mall-goers. Thus, it will be contended that a historical narrative of past sufferings comes to legitimize the new liberal "freedoms" that are available through the full connection to and participation of Iraqi Kurdistan in the capitalist economic world system.
urn:nbn:de:hebis:04-0003-2015-103-36429
2018-01-31
Shopping Malls
https://doi.org/10.17192/meta.2015.5.3642
A Periphery Becomes a Center? Shopping Malls as Symbols of Modernity in Iraqi Kurdistan
Periphery
2015-11-03
article
Schluwa
Sama
Sama, Schluwa
2015-11-03
application/pdf
Gender Relations
2015
Universitätsbibliothek Marburg
Publikationsserver der Universitätsbibliothek Marburg
Neoliberalism
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English
2015-11-03
Periphery
2196-629X
2013
Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies (CNMS)
Middle East - Topics + Arguments
Periodical
General history of Asia; Middle East
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Marburg
Philipps-Universität Marburg
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urn:nbn:de:hebis:04-00030
2015
5
application/pdf
PeriodicalPart
Vol 5 (2015)
urn:nbn:de:hebis:04-0003-2015-1033
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https://doi.org/10.17192/meta.2015.5.103
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