TEENAGERS IN THE MALL ENVIRONMENT

This study focuses on the issue of social discrimination against teenagers in shopping malls. Young people, as often being perceived to be threats to the dominant forces of adult world, experience constraints of the adult values in different public spaces. Considering the teenagers' use of leisure time and spaces, the shopping mall has been observed as an extensively used space by this group for various reasons. Migros, a shopping mall in Ankara, Turkey was chosen as the site for this research. The main purpose of the study is to obtain clues for the sources of perceived discrimination patterns against Turkish teenagers in the mall environment, which is expected to delineate physical and social aspects of the problem, concerning the mall space. Information on these issues was obtained through observation and in-depth interviews with 104 teenagers.

Autorentext

Dr. Guliz Mugan Akinci, as a sociologist, obtained her Ph.D degree in the field of environmental psychology. Currently, she has been working in OKAN University, Istanbul. She has works on incivility experience of urban youth, teenagers in the mall space, mobile phone use in public spaces and interrelationship between time-use and space.