Approximating new spaces of consumption at the Abasto Shopping Mall, Buenos Aires, Argentina

This paper outlines the resources available to researchers interested in approximating the domains of affect, emotion, and assemblage in today's cultural landscapes of consumption. The extended introduction includes a brief review of recent methodological innovations in accessing embodied experience and materiality more generally. Next, I introduce the Abasto Shopping Mall in central Buenos Aires and outline how I approached four months of fieldwork there in 2010 and 2011. I then present the key findings before concluding with a discussion on how to navigate recent empirical and theoretical contributions to the emerging geographies of consumption that are oriented toward affect, emotion, assemblage, and technologies of biopolitical subjectivity.