Malled: Deciphering Shopping in Canada

by Kit Dobson

Generally Kit Dobson hates malls. But he is fascinated by them, by their place in our society, by how we interact with them and how they end up in our books, movies and art. In Getting Malled , the author explores malls and the shopping that occurs in and around them from one end of Canada to the other. From Chinook Centre in Calgary to the underground malls of Montreal and even up to the famous Walmart in Whitehorse, he looks at our culture of consumerism, and how malls are both shaped by their location and shape the spaces around them. While Kit may never become fond of aspects of consumer culture like the selfie stick or the Elf on the Shelf, by the end of Getting Malled , he has found a peace with our spaces for shopping, which he suggests are only a more recent reflection of a need that will never go away.

Genres: Nonfiction

200 pages, Paperback

Published October 3, 2017

About the author

Kit Dobson is an associate professor of Canadian literature at Calgary’s Mount Royal University. He is the author of Transnational Canadas: Anglo-Canadian Literature and Globalization (WLU Press, 2009), and co-author, with Smaro Kamboureli, of Producing Canadian Literature: Authors Speak on the Literary Marketplace (WLU Press, 2012).

Reviews

[Jay-san · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read this book if you're a Marxist and don't want to work hard or take personal responsibility for your life. Dobson admits that Marx is his bedtime reading. He's a social justice warrior (a cultural Marxist) who stinks of globalism (he sponsors a Syrian family). Dobson is a feminist who abstains from calling his wife/girlfriend "wife/girlfriend" and instead uses the politically correct "partner" to refer to the mother of his children. He's a pushover who believes everyone is racist. He's a beta male--very easily offended; an individual who uses the terms "respect" and "minorities" ad nauseam. Dobson should read "12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos" by Jordan B Peterson. That book will help him become a man--a label that he (and other Marxists) passionately despise. Alas, according to Peterson, more than 1/4 of all professors in the humanities are Marxists. No wonder Dobson, his career and books (especially Malled) are such embarrassing failures.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I won this through Goodreads, and I have mixed feelings about it. I think I was expecting something more scholarly and decisive, and this not that. It's more of a travelogue, really. It asks some thought-provoking questions, and it was interesting to see familiar places from a different perspective.