La construction sociale de la réalité dans un centre commercial : ordres de réalité concurrents et négociation de l’ordre social

• Main Author: Thibaut Besozzi
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Laboratoire d'Ethnologie et de Sociologie Comparative 2017-12-01
• Series: Ateliers d'Anthropologie
• Subjects: France; diversion; ethnography; negotiation; orders of reality; shopping malls
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/ateliers/10394

Based on an ethnographic study of a shopping mall located in the city center—in which I was immersed for eight months, and where, day to day, a phenomenon of space appropriation and of primary sociability established itself through the presence of socially vulnerable elderly people—I show the complexity of the reality of shopping malls. This reality results from a both practical and mental everyday social construct, which differs for the various individuals involved. Within the Saint-Cyprien shopping mall, I identified three “orders of reality”—institutional, conventional and informal—that testify to this complexity and compete with one another to define “the” reality of shopping malls. The localized social order is the product of a more or less conflictual negotiation between these different ways of defining and practicing shopping malls.