Conflict Malleability: Shopping malls and urban conflict in the Russian-Ukrainian War

Over the last 20 years, neoliberal East European cities have seen a profound growth in the number of shopping malls. The centrality of the mall to neoliberal East European urbanity reflects the mall’s distinct ability to permeate borders and successfully integrate itself into a variety of cultural contexts. At the same time, much of the war in Ukraine is taking place in terrain which can be defined as ‘urban’, meaning the mall has become highly integrated into the ongoing war.

This presentation explores malls both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ what is understood as the ‘battlefield’ in its traditional sense – that is, both those facing physical destruction and bombardment as well as the ongoing metamorphoses elsewhere in Ukraine, Russia, and Poland. This moment provides a unique opportunity to witness the ways in which the pre-existing mall, widespread throughout the urban space of neoliberal East Europe, is pushed to new extremes and is able to adapt, or otherwise, to the new realities posed. This is particularly important given the so-called ‘hybrid’ nature of this war: urban space becomes an arena in which relatively abstract and intangible concepts ranging from sanctions to ideology are crystalised. Such analysis assists us in further understanding the ‘everyday lived experience’ of wartime.

About the speaker: 

Oliver Banatvala is a PhD student at UCL SSEES, where he also completed an MRes in East European Studies. He is particularly interested in the mundane realities of the everyday urban experience, and so his research centres around the shopping mall in neoliberal East Europe. More specifically, he is exploring the mall as a lens through which to understand the ‘lived experience’ of the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Image credit: Performance “Further is just speakerphone” by V. Alimpiev and A. Kokhanov, Wikimedia