Race and Affluence: An Archaeology of African America and Consumer Culture (Contributions to Global Historical Archaeology)

Rating:
Summary: Review from Historical Archaeology
Review: Review(s)
`The book is a good example of the fruits an interdisciplinary approach can bear, for the author mixes very skillfully documents, oral testimony, photographs, and material evidence. Mullins is also keen to draw on anthropology, sociology, semiotics, history, and philosophy, not restricting himself to archaeology, and the result is clearly worth of praise... Most importantly, though, is his commitment to write a specific people's history...'

Rating:
Summary: Consumerism as a Strategy for Full Citizenship
Review: Social interaction and belief systems converge in this provocative extension of consumer analysis by Paul Mullins. In his award-winning study of African-Americans in Annapolis, Maryland, 1850Ð1930 (Mullins won the 1999 John L. Cotter Prize given by the Society for Historical Archaeology for best book published by a young scholar in the field), Mullins departs from models of consumption based solely on exchange value (price) or on essentialist notions of material symbolism and cultural identity. Mullins asserts the Ôcentrality of desireÕÑÔthe belief that an object will realize or contribute to some idealization when it is consumedÕ (p. 31; emphasis in original) is critical in the construction and contestation of subjectivity. Subjectivity occurs when members of a subgroup forge and renegotiate a cultural identity within the bounds of specific physical conditions and power relationships that are not under their control. Subjectivity is neither essential nor imposed; it does not increase or decrease status, although it enables the development of new personas. The book is finely written and thoroughly researched, combining historical research with analysis of archaeologically-recovered material culture. Mullins's research makes it clear that there were no universal African-American consumption patterns. Instead he found "strong consistencies in African-American consumption [that] suggest how African Americans negotiated common structural conditions and constantly transformed a shared heritage" (pp. 187Ð88). The objects Mullins studies are ordinary ones as likely to be found at Euro-American home sites as they are at African-American sites. MullinsÕs interest, however, is not in the artifact patterns per se but in the clusters of beliefs that African Americans projected onto, saw reflected in, or as flowing from material goods. Setting this form of consumerism within its racial setting, Mullins links consumption with African-American desires for full citizenship. His work departs dramatically from the emphases of earlier consumer studies in historical archaeology. It is a call for archaeologists to avoid reductionism, and to question materiality in and of itself. Mullins asks us to revise our ways of thinking about racial ideologies and the mystification of ideas about race by taking a novel and rewarding approach to African-American consumerism.

Submitted by Mary C. Beaudry, Department of Archaeology, Boston University

Rating:
Summary: Review from Historical Archaeology
Review: Social interaction and belief systems converge in this provocative extension of consumer analysis by Paul Mullins. In his award-winning study of African-Americans in Annapolis, Maryland, 1850Ð1930 (Mullins won the 1999 John L. Cotter Prize given by the Society for Historical Archaeology for best book published by a young scholar in the field), Mullins departs from models of consumption based solely on exchange value (price) or on essentialist notions of material symbolism and cultural identity. Mullins asserts the Ôcentrality of desireÕÑÔthe belief that an object will realize or contribute to some idealization when it is consumedÕ (p. 31; emphasis in original) is critical in the construction and contestation of subjectivity. Subjectivity occurs when members of a subgroup forge and renegotiate a cultural identity within the bounds of specific physical conditions and power relationships that are not under their control. Subjectivity is neither essential nor imposed; it does not increase or decrease status, although it enables the development of new personas. The book is finely written and thoroughly researched, combining historical research with analysis of archaeologically-recovered material culture. Mullins's research makes it clear that there were no universal African-American consumption patterns. Instead he found "strong consistencies in African-American consumption [that] suggest how African Americans negotiated common structural conditions and constantly transformed a shared heritage" (pp. 187Ð88). The objects Mullins studies are ordinary ones as likely to be found at Euro-American home sites as they are at African-American sites. MullinsÕs interest, however, is not in the artifact patterns per se but in the clusters of beliefs that African Americans projected onto, saw reflected in, or as flowing from material goods. Setting this form of consumerism within its racial setting, Mullins links consumption with African-American desires for full citizenship. His work departs dramatically from the emphases of earlier consumer studies in historical archaeology. It is a call for archaeologists to avoid reductionism, and to question materiality in and of itself. Mullins asks us to revise our ways of thinking about racial ideologies and the mystification of ideas about race by taking a novel and rewarding approach to African-American consumerism.

Submitted by Mary C. Beaudry, Department of Archaeology, Boston University

Rating:
Summary: Review from Journal of Anthropological Research
Review: `...his work is rigorous, well-founded historically, and carefully considered theoretically. ...successfully brought together archaeology, history, and social theory and applied them to a critically important contemporary issue. This is a fine piece of scholarship that marks a major step forward in the maturation of historical archaeology. Race and Affluence should be an obvious choice for a variety of courses on history, historical archaeology, and anthropological theory. For this research, Mullins was given the 2000 John J. Cotter Award by the Society for Historical Archaeology.'

Journal of Anthropological Research, 56 (2000)