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4.0 out of 5 stars
A Review of Elizabeth Chin's Purchasing Power, October 5, 2001
This review is from: Purchasing Power: Black Kids and American Consumer Culture (Paperback)
When faced with the concept of "Black Kids and American Consumer Culture," I immediately turn my thoughts to the image of African American males killing each other for a specific brand of basketball shoe. Conversely, Elizabeth Chin defeats this myth of "combat consumerism" in her recent ethnographic study Purchasing Power. By studying a group of young African American children in Newhallville, Connecticut, Chin develops and explains a new brand of consumer culture that many previous anthropologists fail to recognize. Chin's research contradicts the stereotypical images in society and those portrayed by the media. She defines a new image of African American youth consumer culture-one that goes against commodity fetishism and the need for brand name goods. She discovers one that deals with the harsh world of being poor and black where opportunity and survival are major factors of consumer culture. Chin demonstrates the complexity of this issue by displaying how it is woven in with and affected by society. In this way, she relates consumerism to social injustices, race relations, class diversity, gender differences, cultural baggage and social relationships. Thus, Elizabeth Chin's book Purchasing Power is an informative and profound piece that intrigues the reader with an alternative image of Black Kids and American Consumer Culture.
Throughout her book, Elizabeth Chin does a tremendous job of blending anthropological research information (both others' and her own), and her engaging style of prose writing. This is evident from the onset of the book. In her first two chapters, Chin not only effectively conveys the purpose and results of her work (pp. 4-6), but also does so in a way that the reader is intrigued by the personal stories she tells about the children she interviewed in Newhallville. Her ongoing connections between theories and real life issues with Asia, Natalia, and Tionna are especially strong at the beginning of the book. In this way, readers are compelled to not only understand Chin's idea of the consumer sphere as a medium for social inequality (p. 23), but also to learn and discover what consumer life is like for the specific children interviewed.
In chapter two, Shadow of Whiteness, Chin briefly relates several different ideas from theorists such as Marx, Willis, Genovese and Fisk to her work. For some readers who are less familiar with these pieces, this section might seem somewhat confusing and a little burdensome. In this situation, more background information on the main ideas of the theorists' works would have been helpful. However, one must understand that Chin's overall purpose of the book is not to explain previous anthropological research, but to explain how her participant-observer approach to her ethnographic study of Newhallville children is important to consumer culture.
Chin's Shadow of Whiteness chapter is also very strong with the discussion of similarities between slavery and present-day consumerism. Chin illustrates how current stereotypical attitudes of black consumption have been deeply rooted in society since the time of slavery. Her discussion of slave fashion (pp. 39-41) is especially powerful and affective to her argument. Chin could easily build upon her ideas in this section and create a more in-depth anthropological comparison.
A final section in chapter two that was particularly strong was the analysis of "combat consumerism" and how society feeds on hyperbolized media stories and fraudulent police theories. Chin states several stories of juvenile violence where the media has portrayed the youth criminals as extremely brutal because of trivial material goods desired. Chin's reaction to this societal phenomenon is valid and influential in her overall argument of the book. Chin forcefully conveys her point when she writes,
The understanding that kids like those profiled above are somehow typical combat consumers not only misreads their consumer patterns at material levels but misinterprets the social impact and genesis of these patterns. It is a portrayal tapping a particularly insidious American myth: that the poor are highly susceptible to commodity fetishism, that they are addicted to brands, and that they are willing to acquire expensive things even at the cost of their own (or someone else's) health and/or well-being. Connected to this idea is a whole rat's nest of assumptions about poverty, money, and consumption: that the poor are poor primarily due to their own lack of discipline and self-control; that the poor do not know how to economize or prioritize expenses; and that the commitment of the poor to consume somehow ends up costing "us," whether through crime, welfare, dependency, teenage motherhood; that these depravities lead to murder, drugs, sex crimes. (pp. 56-57)
At this point in her book, Chin returns her focus to her work with the Newhallville children. A common theme begins to come forth throughout the next few chapters. Chin does a tremendous job of demonstrating how social relationships influence consumption. This is first evident in her section on "School Lunch," and later in the accounts of shopping sprees where children decided to spend money on family members. These sections have vast similarities to previous anthropological research on kinship and reciprocity, especially those who have completed fieldwork like Malinowski's research on the Kula. Chin could have enhanced her argument by examining the similarities in the research. In this way, Chin could have been able to generalize that the young African Americans in Newhallville are not a special case of consumer culture, but share similar characteristics of other cultures and societies.
As briefly stated in the previous paragraph, the idea of generalization seems to be one point that Chin fails to address adequately in her book. Although her research focuses on Newhallville children, it would not be out of her anthropological context to try and generalize from her results. Since she fails to sufficiently generalize her ideas, the sub-title of her book is resultantly problematic. Chin blatantly states that Purchasing Power will pertain to "Black Kids and American Consumer Culture." With Chin's choice to write specifically on black Newhallville kids, she consequently should not place them in the category of all black kids without stating the possible similarities or differences.
Further research topics that should have been considered in Purchasing Power that would have enhanced the overall argument would have been to interview different ages of children. The choice of using third and fourth grade children might have been a slightly young age to examine. Unlike the Newhallville children, I personally grew up in an upper-middle class family in a middle-class community. However, at this age I did not really understand consumerism and what I truly desired. I found myself purchasing many material goods for other people, similar to the children in Chin's study. Chin possibly decided to use this age group because this could be a truer form of consumer culture, one before society was able to taint consumer choices. An older group of children might have been affected more by society. In either case, using different age groups would still be an interesting anthropological research topic to consider.
One final idea that would enhance the study would be to examine how a child from a socioeconomic situation like Newhallville would react when placed in a different socioeconomic position. For example, would his or her consumerism change when placed in the care of a family who was from a higher-class community? Would the child then begin to find commodity fetishism and the need for brand name goods important? Today in my small town community of Lewistown, Pennsylvania, many families host foster children. It is an amazing phenomenon to witness how children from lower class cities adapt to the consumer culture of the majority middle class population. They begin to shift their priority of buying necessary, conservative items to buying higher-priced brand name goods.
Overall, Elizabeth Chin's recent book Purchasing Power is an intriguing and thoughtful book that displays a different type of consumer culture. Unlike many previous anthropological studies and the media, her research shows how commodity fetishism and brand name goods do not dominant lower socioeconomic children of Newhallville, Connecticut. Instead there is often a great deal of prioritizing and economic discipline with their consumer choices. Furthermore, the social injustices, race relations, class diversity, gender differences, and social relationships around them shape their consumer culture. Chin uses an informative, yet almost amusing style of writing that effectively develops her argument. Although there are several areas in which her book could have been stronger, her ethnographic work with the children is tremendous and well worth the reader's time. Therefore, Elizabeth Chin's Purchasing Power is an engaging and alternative theoretical model of African American youth consumer
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