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increasingly, to non-places that remain abstract except in their influence on the
structure and appearance of the shopping environment. It is an example of the de-
territorialized space that is created through the complexity of cultural flows that
challenge simple notions of a cultural centre and a subordinate periphery. 21 The
familiarity the first-time visitor feels in Solna Centre cannot be traced to a specific
geographic location, but is based on the generalized experience accrued while
passing through other equally non-specific places.
Let us now turn from geographic to social dimensions of place and consider how
the changing physical landscape affects Solna Centre as a meaningful site. What
impact does the experience of specific and non-specific geographies have on the
forms of sociality that take place here?
To the extent that Solna Centre can be considered a social space, its sociality is
based on movement. People are continually on the move through this environment,
passing through the shopping centre to make a quick purchase, between destinations.
The fact that it is a place where goods are bought and sold also determines the forms
of sociality that dominate here, that is the small exchanges that characterize these
transactions of selecting and purchasing desired items. These social practices are
organized in ways that structure space according to a dominant polarity of front stage
and back stage. These concepts have been used by Erving Goffman to analyse social
life in general, and in a shopping centre environment such dramaturgical terms
clearly make sense. 22 It is easy to see how salespersons perform various professional
roles to connect optimally to the audience of visiting customers, and stage encoun-
ters between consumers and the commodities on sale. Compared to more old-
fashioned types of shops, those found in a shopping centre are often experienced as
transparent and open, but there are in fact lots of hidden and forbidden back regions.
Advanced architectural and decorative design serve to hide from the consumer the
system of places for deliveries, staff breaks, and so on that are needed to make every-
thing appear lucidly efficient. In a steady process, commodities are moved from back
to front regions, where they are put on display for potential buyers. Typical for such
commercial places is the rapid pace of interactions, since visitors tend only to pass by
for a very short moment and have to at once understand the basic principles of how
the shopping space is organized, and preferably be enticed into spending some
money there.
There are of course many other interpersonal encounters taking place in the
centre, such as asking for information, a chance meeting with a friend, an appoint-
ment in one of the shops or services, but the vast majority of these are also brief, tran-
sitory encounters. In this sense the dominant social dimension of a shopping centre,
like its geographic dimension, shares many characteristics with other translocal spaces
of late modernity, including centres of transportation such as airports and train
stations, as well as other spaces of consumption around the globe.
From the management’s perspective, movement is a highly desirable characteristic
of the shopping centre as a place. Attempts are made to locate shops and services
strategically, in order to encourage the flow of visitors through major parts of the