City Shoppers and Urban Identification: Observations on the Social Psychology of City Life

Abstract

Chicago housewives comprise four types of shoppers: economic, personalizing, ethical, and apathetic. The personalization and moralization of customer-clerk relationships cannot be inferred from conventional proposition about the anonymity of city life, yet the shoppers are urbanites. Each type of shopper is distinguished by a specific pattern of social characteristics reflecting her position in the social structure of her residential community. Moreover, some evidence suggests that personalizing shoppers draw on their relationships with clerks to form subjective identifications with a community in which they have restricted opportunities for participation.