Being Mexican and American: Negotiating Ethnicity in the Practice of Market Research

We report on an ethnographic consumer research project among Mexican Americans in which negotiation of identity between respondents and a multiethnic, multidisciplinary team structured the process literally and symbolically. This negotiation is examined in terms of research process as well as result...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Human organization 2004-10, Vol.63 (3), p.373-380
Main Authors: Sunderland, Patricia L., Taylor, Elizabeth Gigi, Denny, Rita M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
America
Anthropology
Articulation
Collaboration
Commodities
Companies
Consumer behavior
Consumer research
Consumers
Corporate culture
Corporations
Cultural anthropology
Cultural identity
Ethnic identity
Ethnicity
Ethnography
Ethnology
Field study
Hispanic Americans
Hispanics
Identity
Language culture relationship
Marketing
Mexican Americans
Negotiation
Negotiations
Respondents
Segmentation
Social relations. Intercultural and interethnic relations. Collective identity
Social structure and social relations
U.S.A
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Summary:We report on an ethnographic consumer research project among Mexican Americans in which negotiation of identity between respondents and a multiethnic, multidisciplinary team structured the process literally and symbolically. This negotiation is examined in terms of research process as well as results. We focus on how knowledge of language and cultural practices (or lack thereof) contributed to interactions and how respondents' articulation of being both Mexican and American is itself a collaborative, social process. Refracting the discussion through personal and disciplinary lenses, we underscore tensions and dynamics arising from an anthropological analytic stance vis-à-vis culture and ethnicity versus corporations' need to simplify. We discuss the implications arising from corporate consumer segmenting practices and question the efficacy of these practices, given normative processes of identity formation. In this case, we also show how constructed authenticity, international market forces, and deterritorialized national ethnicities make it possible for authentic Mexican commodities to emerge from a virtually "non-Mexican" part of the United States.
ISSN:0018-7259
1938-3525
DOI:10.17730/humo.63.3.487687122u857r88