Intersectional Political Consumerism: Investigating African American Consumerism during the Chicago Welfare Rights Era

• In Event: 383 - Section on Consumers and Consumption Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 05. Stratification and Consumption

Abstract

This paper describes the author’s theory of Intersectional Political Consumerism (IPC) and has the potential to bridge two seemingly divergent theoretical areas in service to a radical reconceptualization of consumerism. The paper incorporates not only an analysis of race, but the interplay between class and gender as well. This intersectional approach reveals a specific dimension of political consumerism which illuminates how power is shaped, enacted and resisted. Specifically, the theory of IPC incorporates postmodern theory and intersectional analysis given to us by black feminism to determine how African Americans experienced consumerism as a political project and how interconnected identities influenced the ways in which people experienced and made meaning of consumerism.
Within consumption literature, the exploration of African American consumerism has been largely ignored. The study of African American consumerism allows not only for social scientists to gain a deeper understanding of how marginalized groups have engaged within a consumerist society, but also an understanding of how power is legitimized, shaped, negotiated, transferred and preserved within the marketplace.
The author is particularly interested in consumerism as political protest during the Welfare Rights Era and focuses specifically on the poor and working poor as consumers. The major theoretical and methodological interventions of this paper are the incorporation of intersectional and computational analysis.

Author

• Nicole Marie Brown, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign