Race, Ethnicity, and Consumption

A Sociological View

Patricia Banks

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781351356305
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Race, Ethnicity, and Consumption: A Sociological View looks at the central concerns of consumer culture through the lens of race and ethnicity. Each chapter illustrates the connections between race, ethnicity, and consumption by focusing on a specific theme: identity, crossing cultures, marketing and advertising, neighborhoods, discrimination, and social activism. By exploring issues such as multicultural marketing, cultural appropriation, consumer racial profiling, urban food deserts, and racialized political consumerism, students, scholars, and other curious readers will gain insight on the ways that racial and ethnic boundaries shape, and are shaped by, consumption. This book goes beyond the typical treatments of race and ethnicity in introductory texts on consumption by not only providing a comprehensive overview of the major theories and concepts that sociologists use to make sense of consumption, race, and ethnicity, but also by examining these themes within distinctly contemporary contexts such as digital platforms and activism.

Documenting the complexities and contradictions within consumer culture, Race, Ethnicity, and Consumption is an excellent text for sociology courses on consumers and consumption, race and ethnicity, the economy, and inequality. It will also be an informative resource for courses on consumer culture in the broader social sciences, marketing, and the humanities.

1 Introduction and Overview

Introduction

In 2008, the tech company Airbnb disrupted the hotel industry when it introduced an online platform that allowed everyday homeowners to rent their homes to travelers. By 2016, the hashtag #AirbnbWhileBlack was trending on Twitter. African American users reported discrimination when they tried to use the service to book accommodations. In some instances, open rentals became mysteriously unavailable after black customers made inquiries. In other situations, black travelers who had successfully rented properties were harassed during their stays. Airbnb responded by launching the #WeAccept campaign featuring a multicultural ad that aired during the Super Bowl. They also hired Eric Holder, the former United States Attorney General, to develop an anti-discrimination policy. Concerns about discrimination gave rise to competitors like Noirbnb, which specializes in offering a “safer experience for travelers of color” (Lebeau 2016; Noirbnb n.d.). Some black travelers considered switching to Noirbnb not only to avoid mistreatment at Airbnb rentals but also to “buy black” and support Noirbnb’s black founders (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Airbnb’s #WeAccept campaign.

This example highlights several key issues related to race, ethnicity, and consumption, such as discrimination in the marketplace, multicultural marketing, and racialized political consumerism. Race, Ethnicity, and Consumption explores these themes as well as other central concerns in the study of race, ethnicity, and consumption from a sociological perspective. Before delving into the intersections of race, ethnicity, and consumption, it will be helpful to review how sociologists have thought about these, as well as related concepts, independently. First, an overview of consumption is provided, followed by an overview of race and ethnicity.

Consumption

Consumption refers to the “selection, purchase, use, maintenance, repair and disposal of any product or service” (Campbell 1995, 100). Consumption takes place within a range of different contexts of exchange. For example, individuals may acquire goods through gift giving, in which norms of reciprocity, rather than an explicit agreement, obligate them to give to others in return (Mauss [1925] 1966). Individuals who give an item to a friend or family member to celebrate events such as a quinceañera—a Latinx coming-of-age tradition to celebrate a girl’s 15th birthday—or who give a donation to a nonprofit such as an Asian American or Native American cultural institution are engaging in gift giving. Barter, or the trade of goods and services, is another type of exchange. For example, if neighbors trade homemade food with one another, such as kimchi and fry bread, they are bartering. Although gift giving and bartering exist in contemporary societies, much of the consumption in places like the United States involves consumers paying sellers money forgoods and services.

The high level of attention and resources spent on consumption in places like the United States and Great Britain has led them to be characterized as consumer societies (Baudrillard [1970] 1998). In consumer societies, consumerism, or “the belief that personal well-being and happiness depend largely on one’s level of personal consumption,” is widespread (Wright and Rogers 2015). For example, the historian Lizabeth Cohen (2003) argues that in the postwar period the United States became a consumers’ republic,where there was a heightened focus on mass consumption as a vehicle for creating prosperity, equality, and freedom.

Along with consumers, who purchase, receive, and use products and services, other central actors involved in systems of exchange include producers and intermediaries. Producers make goods and provide services. Intermediaries link producers and consumers. One type of intermediary is the surrogate consumer, who acts “as an agent retained by a consumer to guide, direct, and/or transact marketplace activities” (Solomon 1986, 208). Surrogate consumers may be involved in the physical aspects of consumption, such as conducting transactions on behalf of consumers in the marketplace. This is a role played by actors such as stockbrokers, who purchase stocks for clients, and interior designers, who purchase decorative items for clients. Along with being involved in the physical transfer of goods, surrogate consumers are sometimes also involved in shaping meanings and values around consumption. For example, interior designers who select furniture for homeowners, wardrobe consultants who purchase clothing for clients, and art consultants who purchase paintings for collectors signal what items are in style.

Another term used to describe actors involved in the meaning-making aspects of consumption is cultural intermediaries. Cultural intermediaries “construct value by mediating how goods (or services, practices, people) are perceived and engaged with by others” (Maguire and Matthews 2014, 2). For example, marketers who develop promotional strategies for products and journalists who review the latest movies and art exhibitions play important roles in constructing and communicating the value of goods and services (Khaire 2017; McCracken 1986, 74–77).

Finally, in the online world of consumption, prosumers are especially important agents. Prosumers act as both producers and consumers of goods and services. For example, users on online sites like BlackPlanet create content that other users consume, as well as peruse content that other users produce (Ritzer and Jurgenson 2010).

Race and Ethnicity

A racial group refers to “a group of human beings socially defined on the basis of physical characteristics” such as skin color, hair texture, and facial features (Cornell and Hartmann [1998] 2007, 25). Racism isan ideology legitimating the inferior treatment of a racial group based on their purported inherent or cultural inferiority (Clair and Denis 2015; Wilson 1999). More recent scholarship on racial inequality considers how racism has changed in form over time. For example, Lawrence D. Bobo, James R. Kluegel, and Ryan A. Smith (1997) outline a shift from Jim Crow racism to laissez-faire racism over the course of the late 20th century in the United States. Whereas Jim Crow racism rests on an ideology of biological inferiority, laissez-faire racism is rooted in an ideology of cultural deficits. Likewise, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva argues that contemporary racism commonly takes on a particular form—color-blind racism. Bonilla-Silva defines color-blind racism as an“ideology, which . . . explains contemporary racial inequality as the outcome of nonracial dynamics” ([2003] 2010, 2).

While race is a social construction that refers to group differences based on physical traits, an ethnic group is a collectivity having real or assumed shared ancestry, history, and culture (Cornell and Hartmann [1998] 2007, 19). Ethnocentrism refers to “a belief in the normality and superiority of one’s own people and their ways of doing things” (Cornell and Hartmann [1998] 2007, 32). Comparing ethnocentrism and racism, Stephen E. Cornell and Douglas Hartmann ([1998] 2007) explain that the former is more often focused inward and less malignant.

Thoughracial and ethnic groups are distinct, they are sometimes collectively referred to as ethnoracial groups. This umbrella term can be useful because both ethnic and racial minorities share some similarities, such as often being stigmatized, or “assigned low status,” and being discriminated against, or receiving unfair treatment (Lamont et al. 2016, 6–7). Race and ethnicity also share other similarities, such as the common presumption that they are natural categories though they are socially constructed (Cornell and Hartmann [1998] 2007). It is also the case that ethnic groups, as well as other types of groups such as religious groups, can become racial groups through racialization(Feagin and Cobas 2016, 15; Silverstein 2005). Racialization refers to “processes through which any diacritic of social personhood—including class, ethnicity, generation, kinship/affinity, and positions within fields of power—comes to be essentialized, naturalized, and/or biologized” (Silverstein 2005, 364). Muslims constitute a religious group that is sometimes referred to as having been racialized (Silverstein 2005).

Social and symbolic boundaries are fundamental to racial and ethnic divisions. Symbolic boundaries refer to “conceptual distinctions made by social actors to categorize objects, people, practices, and even time and space,” while social boundaries refer to “objectified forms of social differences manifested in unequal access to and unequal distribution of resources (material and nonmaterial) and social opportunities” (Molnár and Lamont 2002, 168–169). Symbolic boundaries associated with race and ethnicity, such as beliefs about who is an in-group member, and ideas about the morality and intelligence of various groups, contribute to social boundaries, such as racial and ethnic segregation and wealth inequality.

Paying attention to other social categories is also important for understanding how racial and ethnic boundaries are manifested in social life. Racial and ethnic groups are internally differentiated by categories such as gender, class, sexual orientation, age, and ability. These internal divisions within racial and ethnic groups mean that symbolic and social boundaries can differ among people who share the same race and ethnicity. For example, working-class women within an ethnoracial minority group may be treated differently than upper-class women in the same group as well as identify in varying ways. Intersectional analyses of group boundaries analyze how “overlapping systems of subordination,” such as racism, classism, and sexism, shape people’s lives (Crenshaw 1991, 1265).

The Links between Race, Ethnicity, and Consumption

The Race, Ethnicity, and Consumption Framework (seeFigure 1.2)calls attention to the linkages between consumption and ethnoracial boundaries. Race and ethnicity, as well as consumption, are fundamental dimensions of social life (Johnson et al. 2019). They are also mutually reinforcing. Consumption, along with practices related to consumption such as the marketing of goods and services, influences symbolic and social boundaries associated with race and ethnicity, as well as other social identities. In turn, racial and ethnic and other social group boundaries—symbolic and social—shape consumption and those practices related to consumption. Let’s imagine four scenarios that illustrate these dynamics.

Figure 1.2 Race, Ethnicity, and Consumption Framework.

• Maria Lopez is a later-generation Mexican American woman who lives in a predominately Latinx neighborhood with a large population of Mexican immigrants. She is making a traditional Mexican meal to celebrate her daughter’s upcoming tenth birthday. To purchase the ingredients, Maria drives a few miles from her home to a local store. As she walks down the aisles filled with staples to make traditional Mexican c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction and Overview
• 2 Identity
• 3 Crossing Cultures
• 4 Marketing and Advertising
• 5 Neighborhoods
• 6 Discrimination
• 7 Social Activism
• Conclusion: Consumption and the Color Line
• Index