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BOOK PRESENTATION & DISCUSSION:
LATINOS. INC. :The Marketing and Making of a People

Author : Arlene Dávila, New York University

 
WE ARE MORE OR LESS IMPORTANT IN TERMS OF OUR MARKETABILITY

The second thing concerns marketing research. I only wrote one chapter and I feel like a whole encyclopedia can be written about marketing discourse, and sort of how it’s constructed and it’s meaning, it’s political significance for U.S. Latinos in this country and U.S. populations at large because increasingly we are rendered into consumer markets and considered more or less important in terms of our marketability.

And there’s an incredible industry that we know so little about because its profitability is predicated on its ability to maintain secret knowledges. And this seeming knowlege of -- we really can give you the insight behind -- this kind of anthropological energy.

The promise that one -- they compete on the basis of who gets closer to that consumer and through what techniques they can achieve that. So, there’s a budding industry out there of research that as an anthropologist and having been offered by the way jobs of doing this research because as anthropologist I could sense that sort of interest -- anthropological interest on adopting research anthropologist or thinking of the consumer in some ways that is fascinating and again when browsing through the literature I didn’t see enough information on that. And I wish I had three or four -- you know -- an army of little research teams instead of being one person -- and that’s why teaching is so exciting for all of us because we’re always thinking about so much of what can be done in that area.

And last point concerns audiences and consumers, again, just browse through it. Just one chapter but that was one of the most rewarding experiences of writing the book, was actually getting together those focus groups and talking to Latinos and just talking about how jmuch people reveal about themselves, about their subjectivities through the medium. So in that chapter the conversations are not only about tv programs but the people are talking about themselves and I thought that was interesting. And again we especailly ih cultural studies we spend a lot of time talking about interpretations and textual analyses and this and that but it’s very important to really get to that other end and follow the circle of production -- production, xxx, consumption. And there’s a lot that we learn in doing that. So I guess, I’ll end here.



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