Comprehending competing spheres of social control

Abstract

My purpose here is to examine the arrangement of both formal and informal norms and how they are utilized to channel children's behavior along certain trajectories. It is argued that three distinct contexts for social action exist within the consumer society. These contexts are described as "spheres of action" which possess moral agents who have vested interests in channeling individual behavior in certain directions. This paper examines this theory in light of the Christmas shopping season, by focusing on the conflictual spheres of social action that exist within the setting of a mall. First, there remain the capitalist entrepreneurs who have a need to sell products both to, and for children. On the other hand, parents often have to control their child's newly created impulsive need for a toy or other product that is directly marketed at them. Unobtrusive observations of children's behaviors were made over a four week period during the Christmas shopping season in order to provide data for an ethnographic analysis of competing methods of social control utilized by the Mall, the toy store, and the parent.