Causes of Loitering Problems

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The Formation of Identity in Teenage Mall Microculture:

A Case Study of Teenagers in Czech Malls*

JANA SPILKOV*ƒ and LUCIE RADOV*ƒ**

Charles University, Prague

Abstract: Geographies of children and youth are a surprisingly neglected research

topic in the transforming (post-communist) countries, where many societal

changes are taking place. This article introduces a research project that

focused on teenagers and their leisure-time activities, concentrating especially

on teenagers who spend the majority of their leisure time in shopping malls.

The goal of the article is to reveal how such teenagers use the micro-space of

the shopping mall, how they socialise, and how their social identities may be

produced through different practices in the mall space. The study focused on

teenagers aged 14″€“17 “€hanging out”€™ in shopping malls in the largest Czech

cities. The data were collected by participant observation and interviews. The

teenagers studied have abandoned typical public spaces used for leisure time

and produced their own spatial identities in the specifi c space of the shopping

mall. They have created a true microculture through a combination of the personalities,

locations, and events that they share in in the mall environment.

The article also discusses interesting results concerning preference factors for

leisure time activities in the mall environment. The concluding part of the article

draws implications from the study for the future research agenda in the

geographies and sociologies of youth.

Keywords: teenagers, hanging out, spatial microculture, geography of children

and youth, shopping mall, Czech Republic

Sociologick*ƒ½ *„asopis/Czech Sociological Review, 2011, Vol. 47, No. 3: 565″€“586

Introduction

Since the beginning of the 1990s, Central and Eastern Europe has within just fi fteen

years lived through a process of retail development that usually takes perhaps

fi fty years. This has considerably affected the spatial structure of the new

retail environment and it has also affected consumer behaviour (shopping as a

* This article is based on research undertaken within research project no. MSM

0021620831

“€Geographical Systems and Risk Processes in the Context of Global Changes and

European

Integration”€™, sponsored by the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport and

project

no. 205/08/P190 sponsored by the Czech Science Foundation.

** Direct all correspondence to: Jana Spilkov*ƒ¡, Lucie Radov*ƒ¡, Department of Social

Geography

and Regional Development, Charles University, Albertov 6, 128 43 Prague 2, Czech

Republic, e-mail: spilkova@natur.cuni.cz, lucieradova@seznam.cz.

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566

leisure time activity), distorted by the previous lack of shopping opportunities. It

seems that teenagers are one of the groups most likely to adapt easily to all these

changes in the retail environment. International experience shows that a growing

percentage of young people in large urban agglomerations of the “€developed

world”€™ spend their leisure time in shopping malls.

The shopping mall is, in principle, an ideal space for teenagers, whose access

to many urban spaces may be limited, who have few leisure places to go

to without structured activities or adult oversight, and who are not suffi ciently

mobile and independent to decide about their leisure activities on their own. The

shopping mall represents a familiar place, safely accessible by public transport,

protected from the environment and unfavourable weather, offering many activities

that are not restricted to just the adult population (caf*ƒ©s, cinema, fast food),

and it is also a space that is considered safe. What is more, shopping and “€fashion

hunting”€™ are “€musts”€™ for the majority of teenagers and foster the socialisation

process and the hoped-for belonging to a particular peer group. Thus, some teenagers

reproduce social identities by “€hanging out”€™ in shopping malls.

The research agenda in post-communist societies has focused on typical

transformational changes and their consequences for society and the value systems

of people in these countries. Studies of various social subgroups or even

subcultures within the new, neoliberal environment have become frequent. However,

it is clear that there is still one important group which is severely understudied,

and that is children and youth. The geographies of children and youth is still

a neglected topic in current research trends. The environments of children and

youth are not considered a phenomenon worthy of its own category. However, in

the context of the decline of traditional values among young people, it is obvious

that todays teenagers spend their leisure time in a different way than their predecessors

did some twenty years ago. For this reason it is of crucial importance to

study what are the main changes in the leisure activities of contemporary youth

in transforming countries.

This article introduces a research project that focused on teenagers and their

leisure time activities, with a special interest in the activity of “€hanging out”€™ in

shopping malls. After providing theoretical background on the general characteristics

of “€postmodern”€™ lifestyles, the article describes the notion of microcultures

within the fi eld of childrens and youth geography research. The article

then proceeds to discuss the methodology and results of interviews with and

participant observation of teenagers in shopping malls in Prague and in other

large cities of the Czech Republic. The primary goal is to reveal how teenagers

spend their leisure time in the mall, how they use the microspace of the mall, how

they socialise (there), and how their social identities may be produced through

different practices in the mall space. The article also aims to identify the “€core

kids”€™ known from US studies [Kowinski 1985; Lewis 1989; Baker and Haytko

2000; Underhill 2004] and point out the most striking differences between Czech

and American teenagers in the shopping mall. The article concludes with a disJana

Spilkov*ƒ¡, Lucie Radov*ƒ¡: The Formation of Identity in Teenage Mall Microculture

567

cussion of the main fi ndings on the attractiveness of shopping malls for teenagers

and the spatial practices of their microcultures in this new retail environment.

Teenagers and postmodern consumption: a theoretical framework

Social science research on children in the 1990s evolved around the notion of “€new

social studies of childhood”€™ [Ansell 2009], which was based on the perception of

childhood as a social construct and children as social actors. According to this approach,

children and youth are social actors engaged extensively with the world

around them. By the time Matthews and Limb [1999] were calling for a defi nition

of a new agenda for the geography of children, the fi eld of childrens geography

was already widely recognised in Anglo-Saxon social science. The work of

scholars in this area was established on the boundary between geography, sociology,

and environmental or developmental psychology, etc. [Hart 1997; Matthews

1992]. The main objection was that the agenda of childrens and youth geography

centred on different social groups defi ned by gender [McDowell 1999; Monk 1992;

Winchester 1992], race [Bettie 2003; Jackson 1989], ethnicity [Hyams 2000; Sibley

1995], or different sexuality [Bell and Valentine 1995]. However, geographers and

sociologists apparently did not study the socio-spatial differences in the construction

of childhood, nor the complex relations of childhood and space. Instead, the

focus was on micro-scale studies of children and their immediate environments

and studies of the behaviour of children on a local scale [e.g. Wood and Beck

1994; Matthews, Limb and Percy-Smith 1998]. According to Ansell [2009: 194],

this paradigm “€has predominantly emphasized agency over structure, concrete

over abstract and local over global”€™. The need for joint efforts with sociologists,

anthropologists, and cultural studies researchers became obvious. While it can

be stated that this effort has been successful and many outstanding contributions

have emerged in the new fi eld of childrens and youth geographies [e.g. Amit-

Talai and Wulff 1995; Skelton and Valentine 1998; Holloway and Valentine 2000;

Aitken 2001; Craig and Dyson 2008], this is not the case for the post-communist

countries, where this type of research agenda has not been widely developed (for

childrens geography in post-communist countries, see, e.g., Horschelman and

Schafer [2005]).

Ansell [2009: 191] also claims that researchers leave untouched the issues of

economic globalisation and neoliberal policies, which are transforming the lives

of many young people. This is the case especially in the post-communist countries,

where particularly the economy and consumer habits, distorted by previous

modes of behaviour under the communist regime, evolved dynamically during

the last two decades [Spilkov*ƒ¡ 2008]. Placing the research of children and youth

into the context of postmodern consumption would seem to be of critical importance.

According to Giddens [1990], having a “€lifestyle”€™ in todays postmodern

society is an absolute necessity. Everybody has their lifestyle and everybody is

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568

forced to have one. Lifestyle is for Giddens represented by an integrated set of

practices engaged in by an individual, not for their benefi t, but for the fact that

they form the material image of the individuals identity. Lifestyle represents the

personality of an individual. The values we appreciate, the clothes we wear, the

food we consume, and the way we spend our leisure time express our lifestyle.

Adopting a lifestyle is thus also a necessity for teenagers who can become lost in

the process of identity creation during pubescence and adolescence [cf. Deutsch

and Theodorou 2010].

Our identity in the postmodern world is formed through our consumption

[Petrusek 2006]. The consumer society is not only an abstract notion, but a reality

which describes the current shape of Western civilisation. The era of consumer

society we are living in changes the culture, its norms, and its values. The consumer

society honours mass consumption, where everything has its price, and

everything becomes a matter of sale and purchase. The passive and materialistic

orientation of current teenagers comes therefore as no surprise.

Time spent in a shopping mall provides the modern individual with much

excitement and satisfaction. The mall attracts and offers consumer society everything

it wants and needs, and consumers are seduced by the mall. Seduction by

publicity and advertising constitutes a kind of invisible violence, which forces

us to desire and then buy and gather things that we do not even need. This lifestyle,