This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Manzo, J. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

Social Control and the Management of "Personal" Space in Shopping Malls

University of Calgary

This study concerns behaviors of persons in planned spaces, namely, enclosed shopping malls, with particular interest in practices conducive to social control in those settings. As an ethnomethodological investigation, it addresses lived social experiences of actors in these sites and not only the deliberate agendas of security firms. Its focus is how persons orient to design elements of shopping malls—corridors, furniture, and flooring—and how these design features are construable as "players" in those contexts. The author examines how design can militate techniques of social-interactional management produced by actors themselves, sometimes unforeseen in architects’ or designers’ plans. This research suggests a broadening of the notion of social control beyond formal and informal human sources to include the physical features of spaces, spaces like shopping malls, and not only of prisons or similar institutions. This study advises that inanimate objects and the spaces that comprise them are informative for and relevant to behaviors of human interactants.

Key Words: social control • shopping malls • planned space • ethnomethodology

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?