I am not sure shopping malls are good cases for discussions linking culture and political economy, because there is really no conflict of culture and not much political economic issues involved in shopping mall development.
Henry Liu ---------------
Dog collars as a metaphor for postmodern cultural development and financial capitalism? I was trying to use the mall as a metaphor or model, not of conflict, but of an embodied or concrete reflection of one world in another.
But, why not look at dog collars? There is no useful function to a dog fur collar on a parka--it is a meaningless design accouterment to signify the great outdoors to the fat yuppie consumer who buys and wears these things. They are filled with some kind of petroleum based synethic fiber, covered in yet another petrochemical fabric, so the only material that isn't completely gas-can technology is the mangey dog skin put on as somekind stamp of authencity. Whether Chinese culture considers dogs nothing more than stew puppies or a fur resource seems a little irrelevant. That such silliness moves the bowels of US trade policy, when issues like the vast sea of foriegn exploited labor go by un-noticed seems to say more about what government policy really does, than is attributabled to the secret powers of a mysterious dog lobby.
If China is willing to defend its cultural heritage and integrity to put dog skin on plastic parkas to some indefatigable end, and the United States is willing to scream in the name of all humanity against such barbarism, then I say, go it for boys. Let's have a trade war.
Really Henry, you must be joking.
Chuck Grimes