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
An exposé of the realities facing poor black children in our consumer socieity.
What does it mean to be young, poor, and black in our consumer culture? Are black children "brand-crazed consumer addicts" willing to kill each other over a pair of the latest Nike Air Jordans or Barbie backpack? In this first in-depth account of the consumer lives of poor and working-class black children, Elizabeth Chin enters the world of children living in hardship in order to understand the ways they learn to manage living poor in a wealthy society.
In order to move beyond the stereotypical images of black children obsessed with status symbols, Elizabeth Chin spent two years interviewing poor children living in New Haven, Connecticut, about where and how they spend their money. An alternate image of the children emerges, one that puts practicality ahead of status in their purchasing decisions. On a twenty-dollar shopping spree with Chin, one boy has to choose between a walkie-talkie set and an X-Men figure. In one of the most painful moments of her research, Chin watches as Davy struggles with his decision. He finally takes the walkie-talkie set, a toy that might be shared with his younger brother.
Through personal anecdotes and compelling stories ranging from topics such as Christmas and birthday gifts, shopping malls, Toys-R-Us, neighborhood convenience shops, school lunches, ethnically correct toys, and school supplies, Chin critically examines consumption as a medium through which social inequalities-most notably of race, class, and gender--are formed, experienced, imposed, and resisted. Along the way she acknowledges the profound constraints under which the poor and working class must struggle in their daily lives.
Elizabeth Chin is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at Occidental College in Los Angeles.