Date of Award
6-9-2006
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Anthropology
First Advisor
Emanuela Guano - Chair
Second Advisor
Cassandra White
Third Advisor
Kathryn Kozaitis
Abstract
With the postmodern prevalence of shopping as both a recreational and subsistence activity, social class identity is increasingly constituted around access to the landscape of consumption. U.S. middle-class identity is normalized in commercial spaces and the exclusion of the lower-class from these spaces perpetuates wider social disparities. For socially aware members of the middle-class, distinction may be achieved by selectively shopping throughout the metropolitan area with the goal of influencing corporate practices. Yet this distinction is not without cost as middle-class shoppers are prime targets of identity marketing schemes and of the neoliberal regime’s construction of consent. Through 15 self-proclaimed middle-class shoppers’ reported use of Atlanta’s postmodern landscape of consumption, this study focuses on performances of middle-classness and representations of commercialized spaces with the goal of furthering the anthropological understanding of class identity and urban space as heterogeneous.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.57709/1059164
Recommended Citation
Tabor, Desiree Lynn, "Consumption Practices and Middle-Class Consciousness among Socially Aware Shoppers in Atlanta." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2006.
doi: https://doi.org/10.57709/1059164