Consuming the City: How Global Structures Facilitate Resistance to Ethnic Co-Optation

Contemporary migration theory conceptualizes the nation-state as an ideological force that assimilates the particular symbols and practices of the nomadic ethnicity into dominant nation-state citizenship norms. We interrogate this classic governmentality argument and highlight the role of a prominent postmodern consumptionscape - the global city - in constructing migrant identities that actively promote the oppositional aspects of the nomadic ethnicity attenuated by the process of national mainstreaming. We focus on the nomadic Roma ethnicity. To demonstrate how Roma and local citizen identities are co-constituted through consuming the global city, we analyze the consumption practices of and social interactions among nomadic Roma consumers, national citizen consumers, and city officials in three global cities: Pisa, Toronto, and Berlin.

Citation:

Ela Veresiu and Markus Giesler (2011) ,"Consuming the City: How Global Structures Facilitate Resistance to Ethnic Co-Optation", in E - European Advances in Consumer Research Volume 9, eds. Alan Bradshaw, Chris Hackley, and Pauline Maclaran, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 48-49.