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.
Recommended Citation
Tabor, Desiree Lynn, "Consumption Practices and Middle-Class Consciousness among Socially Aware Shoppers in Atlanta" (2006). Anthropology Theses. Paper 13.
http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/anthro_theses/13