Fettered desire: Consumption and social experience among minority children in New Haven, Connecticut.
Item
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Title
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Fettered desire: Consumption and social experience among minority children in New Haven, Connecticut.
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Identifier
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AAI9707079
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identifier
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9707079
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Creator
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Chin, Elizabeth Joy.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Delmos Jones
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Date
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1996
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Anthropology, Cultural | Sociology, Individual and Family Studies | Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies | Business Administration, Marketing
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Abstract
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This ethnographic study of children's consumer lives focuses on 21 black and hispanic, poor and working class children from New Haven, Connecticut. This dissertation examines consumption as a social process through which social inequalities are generated, perpetuated, and to some degree resisted. A framework for understanding how consumption operates at once as a global force and as a force in individual lives is developed, combining recent theoretical developments in social geography with ethnographic investigation on children and consumption from anthropology, marketing, and consumer behavior research. Results from qualitative and quantitative investigation suggest that these children experience and enact their consumption in an intensely social matrix where sharing and interdependency are valued at home. These children are also critically and playfully engaged with consumption, especially when in sites such as corporate supermarkets and the downtown mall. Little comparative research exists, particularly across class and across cultures; longitudinal studies as well as further documentation of children' s behaviors, possessions and beliefs are called for.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
