title: Rats and bunnies: core kids in an American mall.
abstract: Although adolescents use shopping malls as important places of congregation, very little attention has been paid to this phenomenon by social scientists. This paper reports on a qualitative, interview-based study of adolescents in a New England shopping mall. Regular, day-to-day frequenters (N = 23) were identified and interviewed extensively over a six-week period in 1988. These "core kids" exhibited a good deal of alienation from both family and school, and used the mall as a neutral ground on which to create a fragile but mutually supportive community of kind.
authors.affiliation: Sociology Department, University of the Pacific, Stockton, California 95211.
authors.forename: G H
authors.initials: GH
authors.lastname: Lewis
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007899:Leisure Activities; D008297:Male; D009511:New England; D010379:Peer Group; D012918:Social Alienation; D012919:Social Behavior; D012944:Social Support