ABSTRACT
Household composition was fairly monolithic, with over 80 percent consisting of married parents with young children. The remaining households were composed of older couples or single persons and students from the nearby Tel Aviv University. Consumption-related issues were prominent in the daily talks of Ramat Aviv Gimmel (RAG) women. Residents’ private spaces were highly visible in RAG. Children’s arrivals and departures often resulted in open doors; parents came to fetch their children from casual visits to local friends; neighbors frequented another without previous notice. RAG youths insisted on wearing costly brand-named items, which many parents condemned. A RAG’s clerk was the only to be officially reported to the bank’s headquarters, on grounds of smoking shortly after a new anti-smoking law became effective. The more established that RAG’s image became, the more its individual residents viewed “the neighborhood” as a commodity to be consumed.
