Culture Works: Space, Value, and Mobility Across the Neoliberal Americas

1. Ideologies of Consumption and the Business of Shopping Malls in Puerto Rico

   1 Ideologies of Consumption and the Business of Shopping Malls in Puerto Rico Yes, Puerto Rico is in deficit, but have you seen how Plaza [las Américas] is always full? I’ll leave to New York, . . . but Puerto Rico can’t really be that bad if the stores are always full! I’ll shop less. The clothing compradera [shopping sprees] are over, no more lujos [luxuries]. I’m going to buy the TV before it goes up in price. These are three common responses to the Puerto Rican government’s announcement of a series of emergency measures to address the island’s current economic crisis (Muriente-Pastrana 2008). The sentiments contained in these statements include disbelief that Puerto Rico could in fact be in such bad economic shape when the shopping malls are always full, as well as evidence of two common economic coping strategies : emigration, to improve one’s financial situation, and more consumption , as in “Time to go purchase that discounted TV.” The view that things cannot be that bad because people are shopping is at the core of Puerto Rico’s economic deficit-consumption puzzle. How can the island appear to maintain a strong retail profile when it is mired in unemployment and underemployment? Why are shopping malls full? Where is the money that drives this consumption coming from? That Puerto Ricans like to shop is a common cliché. While I conducted research on the island, whenever I described my research on Puerto Rican   Ideologies of Consumption shopping culture, I was met with a similar response, often voiced with a mixture of pride and embarrassment. “Of course, shopping is our national pastime,” one person said. “Puerto Rico is the country that consumes most throughout Latin America,” said another, who reminded me that Puerto Rico has one of the largest shopping malls (Plaza las Américas) and the greatest number of shopping centers per square mile in the hemisphere. People were quick to recall such statistics, but no one could point me to the source for these “facts.” They had become ingrained common knowledge, as Puerto Ricans described themselves as the most avid of conspicuous consumers , with impulse shoppers, novelistas (easily swayed by the new), and despilfarrador (money squandering) among the descriptions most easily summoned. In sum, consumption was seen as the greatest cause of Puerto Rico’s economic ills but also as an important sign of Puerto Ricans’ sense of humor and optimism—the feeling that a more prosperous day is on its way. As a Puerto Rican anthropologist who has lived most of her life in New York, returning to the island on a repeated basis, I have grown accustomed to this dominant myth of the Puerto Rican “shop ’til you drop” consumer as well as quite skeptical of it. Despite Puerto Ricans’ vehement self-characterization as the most avid of consumers, the discourse of overconsumption as constitutive of national character is common among modern and modernizing citizens around the globe. It is also increasingly central to consumers’ general critique of and engagement with consumer society. Additionally, research on U.S. consumer culture has long documented the ways in which consumption by marginal groups in society, be they blacks, Latinos, or women, is often pathologized as aberrant, irrational, and out of control, in reference to an imagined rational consuming subject who is thrifty, savvy, and immune to the seductions and deceptions of the market. In other words, while consumption has long served as a primary medium for the assertion of modernity, progress, and national identity both in the United States and in many modernizing countries around the world, it has always been a contested territory in which societies debate status, merit, class, and identity around notions of proper and improper types of consumption (Cohen 2003; Miller 1995; Liechty 2002). In particular, ever since Thorstein Veblen’s late-nineteenth-century discussion of women’s role in fueling conspicuous and wasteful consumption , scholars have shown how consumption by marginal groups in society is often the most policed, scrutinized, and disparaged. These groups are not only purchasing goods, but they are also seen to be compensating for status, belonging, and even identity itself (Chin 2001; Halter Ideologies of Consumption   2002; Veblen 1994; Zukin 2004a, 2004b). When generalizing notions of Puerto Ricans as uncontrolled ultrashoppers, Puerto Ricans may therefore be subscribing to dominant discourses often circulated about groups perceived to be less “modern” or less...