Great New Books in the Humanities: El Mall: The Spatial and Class Politics of Shopping Malls in Latin America Wednesday, March 30 6:00 - 8:00 PM NYU Center for the Humanities 20 Cooper Square, Fifth Floor Registration: http://nyuhumanities.org/events/event-registration/?ee=91 Please join us for a discussion on El Mall: The Spatial and Class Politics of Shopping Malls in Latin America authored by Arlene Davila, In conversation with Arjun Appadurai, Professor of Media, Culture and Communications, and author Banking on Words: The Failure of Language in the Age of Derivative Finance. And Julie Skurski, Distinguished Lecturer of Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center. While becoming less relevant in the United States, shopping malls are booming throughout urban Latin America. But what does this mean on the ground? Are shopping malls a sign of the region's "coming of age"? El Mall is the first book to answer these questions and explore how malls and consumption are shaping the conversation about class and social inequality in Latin America. Through original and insightful ethnography, Dávila shows that class in the neoliberal city is increasingly defined by the shopping habits of ordinary people. Moving from the global operations of the shopping mall industry to the experience of shopping in places like Bogotá, Colombia, El Mall is an indispensable book for scholars and students interested in consumerism and neoliberal politics in Latin America and the world.