Type of Document Master's Thesis Author Tabor, Desiree Lynn Author's Email Address desireetabor@gmail.com URN etd-04182006-090511 Title Consumption Practices and Middle-Class Consciousness among Socially Aware Shoppers in Atlanta Degree Master of Arts Department Anthropology and Geography Advisory Committee
Advisor Name Title Emanuela Guano Committee Chair Cassandra White Committee Member Kathryn Kozaitis Committee Member Keywords
- Postmodern Atlanta
- Consumption practices
- U.S. middle-class identity
- Urban landscape of consumption
Date of Defense 2006-04-20 Availability unrestricted 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.Files
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