Page 33 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

18 . Consumption in Context

to help families deal with stress and behaviors related to their poverty
and underemployment.
The site of the now nearly defunct Winchester plant powerfully
embodies the changing nature of New Haven in the experience of
Newhallville residents. Not only have successive waves of redevelop-
ment shut the residents out, except as the recipients of social services re-
lated to dysfunction, but the gated and guarded borders are also a re-
minder that they are to some extent shut in as well. One Newhallville
resident, a youth of about eighteen years, had a deeply apocalyptic view
of New Haven and described in great detail a plan—supposedly a secret
pact between Yale University and the city administration—to cut off
electricity, water, and food delivery to black neighborhoods should race
riots ever occur. As he said, "They'll starve us out." Whether or not
such a plan exists is to some degree irrelevant in the face of the widely
held belief that such a plan has, indeed, been laid.

The Study
Over the course of nearly two years, I conducted participant observa-
tion in homes, schools, and neighborhoods and also engaged in more
directed research such as taking children on shopping trips. What I saw
repeatedly underscored that for these children consumption entails the
negotiation of intimate and complex terrains of obligation, reciprocity,
need, and desire. Fantasy was, of course, a significant dimension of
children's consumer lives, as the discussion between Asia and Natalia
shows, and children's consumption lives were not solely focused on tac-
tical maneuvers within household networks. The overall tenor of these
children's consumer lives, however, emphasized self-control, realistic
assessment of personal and family resources, and contributions to the
household—especially to mothers and grandmothers.
The research centers around the twenty-two children who were
members of Lucy Asian's fifth-grade classroom in 1991-92. My initial
introduction to Newhallville came through the Shelton Avenue School,
and I discuss the implications and complexities of this in the book's final
chapter. The spring before I began intensive work with Lucy Asian's
class, I offered a class through the afterschool program, working with a
small group of children to develop and conduct a local study asking
adults "what life was like in this neighborhood when you were young."
This allowed me to get familiar both with the school and the communi-
ty, and, perhaps most important, established me as someone parents
could trust (the study is discussed more fully in the afterword). It was