In America today, you can connect to your ethnic heritage in
dozens of ways, or adopt an identity just for an evening. Our
society is not a melting pot but a salad bar--a bazaar in which the
purveyors of goods and services spend close to $2 billion a year
marketing the foods, clothing, objects, vacations, and events that
help people express their and others'' ethnic identities. This is
a huge business, whose target groups are the "hyphenated
Americans"--in other words, all of us.
As immigrant groups gain economic security, they tend to
reinforce--not relinquish--their ethnic identification. Marilyn
Halter demonstrates that, to a great extent, they do it by
shopping. And their purchasing power is enormous. How has the
marketplace responded to this hunger? Instantly and wholeheartedly:
tweaking old products and inventing new ones; launching new brands
in supermarkets, new music groups, vacation itineraries, language
courses, toys, greeting cards, et cetera. This nexus of business
and ethnicity is already seen as the hottest consumer development
of this decade, and Halter is uniquely qualified to describe its
origins, the exponential growth of products and advertising, and
the phenomenal sales of items from salsa to Chieftains CDs.
She addresses her subject with an abundance of anecdotal
evidence, telling examples of ethnic marketing, and interviews with
entrepreneurs many of them immigrants who are vigorously seizing
the opportunities offered by the business of ethnicity.
Shopping for Identity is provocative, intriguing, and farseeing,
illuminating an important aspect of our contemporary way of life
while validating the yearning we all feel for connection to our
roots.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
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