Page 190 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

Conclusion

For Asia, shopping is infused with racism; for Tarelle, going to the corner
store is at once an adventure in independence and a trial where the temp-
tations and dangers of the drug economy must be negotiated; for Natalia,
Barbie dolls are representatives of a world both foreign and hostile. In
recognizing that these children's consumer lives are shaped by the same
forces of social inequality evident in their neighborhood, educations, and
even their life chances, my aim has been to highlight consumer culture as
a terrain in which questions of social justice loom large. The deprivations
experienced by children like those in Newhallville are deep and lasting
and perhaps all the more poignant because they take place in such close
proximity to wealth and comfort. More than a depoliticized cultural
space in which people may choose to purchase or try on identities, fan-
tasies, and styles, consumer culture is a medium through which multiple
oppressions are brought to bear on people's lives in enduring and inti-
mate ways.
The ethnography of consumption, then, needs to take into account
more than the interactions between individuals and particular commodi-
ties, the specific moment of purchase, the malls and stores where shop-
ping takes place. This is in part because consumption activities cannot be
seen as being limited to these relatively obvious encounters; consump-
tion begins well outside of the store and continues well after a given pur-
chase has been made. Any particular act of consumption is a moment—a
snapshot—taken at the confluence of complex social, political, and his-
torical streams. Understanding these moments requires thinking about
what is taking place within the relatively arbitrary frame (So-and-so is
buying item x) as a prelude to investigation into the breadth of factors that
brought that moment into being. This is why the data generated by the

175