IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/anname/v644y2012i1p50-69.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Working-Class Cast

Author

Listed:
  • Erika L. Paulson
  • Thomas C. O’Guinn

Abstract

The authors investigate brand advertising as an instrument of class politics, used to shape perceptions of and beliefs about social groups, specifically the working class. These images are consistent with the prescriptions of capitalist realism. The authors content-analyze representations of the working class drawn from a random sample of ads from 1950 to 2010. Quantitative results are compared to a variety of secondary data sources, including the General Social Survey and public opinion polling. The authors find that representations of the working class do not closely follow social, political, or economic changes. If anything, increasingly nostalgic images contradict the disappearance of blue-collar jobs. The authors examine the ads in more depth to explain why the content does not align with objective reality, identifying a variety of tableaus commonly used in representations of the working class that are consistent with capitalist realism and myths of the American class structure.

Suggested Citation

  • Erika L. Paulson & Thomas C. O’Guinn, 2012. "Working-Class Cast," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 644(1), pages 50-69, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:644:y:2012:i:1:p:50-69
    DOI: 10.1177/0002716212453133
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0002716212453133
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0002716212453133?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kelly D. Martin & Ronald Paul Hill, 2012. "Life Satisfaction, Self-Determination, and Consumption Adequacy at the Bottom of the Pyramid," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 38(6), pages 1155-1168.
    2. Belk, Russell W, 1987. "Material Values in the Comics: A Content Analysis of Comic Books Featuring Themes of Wealth," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 14(1), pages 26-42, June.
    3. O'Guinn, Thomas C & Shrum, L J, 1997. "The Role of Television in the Construction of Consumer Reality," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 23(4), pages 278-294, March.
    4. Hill, Ronald Paul, 1991. "Homeless Women, Special Possessions, and the Meaning of "Home": An Ethnographic Case Study," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 18(3), pages 298-310, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. James W. Gentry & Robert A. Mittelstaedt, 2017. "The Rapidly Aging World: Implications For Marketing," Global Business Review, International Management Institute, vol. 18(3_suppl), pages 1-18, June.
    2. Andrew Bryant & Ronald Paul Hill, 2019. "Poverty, consumption, and counterintuitive behavior," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 30(3), pages 233-243, December.
    3. Martina Hutton & Canan Corus & Joshua Dorsey & Elizabeth Minton & Caroline Roux & Christopher P. Blocker & Jonathan Z. Zhang, 2022. "Getting real about consumer poverty: Deep processes for transformative action," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(3), pages 1332-1355, September.
    4. Ronald Paul Hill & Daniel Cunningham & Gramercy Gentlemen, 2016. "Dehumanization and Restriction inside a Maximum Security Prison: Novel Insights about Consumer Acquisition and Ownership," Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(2), pages 295-313.
    5. Blocker, Christopher P. & Ruth, Julie A. & Sridharan, Srinivas & Beckwith, Colin & Ekici, Ahmet & Goudie-Hutton, Martina & Rosa, José Antonio & Saatcioglu, Bige & Talukdar, Debabrata & Trujillo, Carlo, 2013. "Understanding poverty and promoting poverty alleviation through transformative consumer research," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 66(8), pages 1195-1202.
    6. Monica C. LaBarge & Martin Pyle, 2020. "Staying in “the works of living”: How older adults employ marketplace resources to age successfully," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(2), pages 742-774, June.
    7. Jaikumar, Saravana & Singh, Ramendra & Sarin, Ankur, 2018. "‘I show off, so I am well off’: Subjective economic well-being and conspicuous consumption in an emerging economy," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 386-393.
    8. Eiji Yamamura, 2014. "The effect of young children on their parents’ anime-viewing habits: evidence from Japanese microdata," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 38(4), pages 331-349, November.
    9. Hong, Soonkwan & Vicdan, Handan, 2016. "Re-imagining the utopian: Transformation of a sustainable lifestyle in ecovillages," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 120-136.
    10. Shir-Way Siew & Michael S. Minor & Reto Felix, 2018. "The influence of perceived strength of brand origin on willingness to pay more for luxury goods," Journal of Brand Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 25(6), pages 591-605, November.
    11. Thompson-Whiteside, Helen & Fletcher-Brown, Judith & Middleton, Karen & Turnbull, Sarah, 2023. "Emergence in emergency: How actors adapt to service ecosystem disruption," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    12. Michela Addis & Gabriele Troilo, 2016. "Humanizing a Superhero: An Empirical Test in the Comic Books Industry," International Business Research, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 9(11), pages 189-200, November.
    13. Bartikowski, Boris & Laroche, Michel & Jamal, Ahmad & Yang, Zhiyong, 2018. "The type-of-internet-access digital divide and the well-being of ethnic minority and majority consumers: A multi-country investigation," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 373-380.
    14. Luigino Bruni & Luca Stanca, 2006. "Income Aspirations, Television and Happiness: Evidence from the World Values Survey," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(2), pages 209-225, May.
    15. Flouri, Eirini, 2000. "An integrated model of consumer materialism: Can economic socialization and maternal values predict materialistic attitudes in adolescents?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 707-724, June.
    16. Su, Hung Jen & Huang, Yu-An & Brodowsky, Glen & Kim, Hyun Jeong, 2011. "The impact of product placement on TV-induced tourism: Korean TV dramas and Taiwanese viewers," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 805-814.
    17. Jiquan Peng & Juan Chen & Liguo Zhang, 2022. "Gender-Differentiated Poverty among Migrant Workers: Aggregation and Decomposition Analysis of the Chinese Case for the Years 2012–2018," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 12(5), pages 1-23, May.
    18. Frey, Bruno S. & Benesch, Christine & Stutzer, Alois, 2007. "Does watching TV make us happy?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 283-313, June.
    19. Martin Eisend & Jana Möller, 2007. "The influence of TV viewing on consumers' body images and related consumption behavior," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 101-116, June.
    20. Shrum, L.J. & Wong, Nancy & Arif, Farrah & Chugani, Sunaina K. & Gunz, Alexander & Lowrey, Tina M. & Nairn, Agnes & Pandelaere, Mario & Ross, Spencer M. & Ruvio, Ayalla & Scott, Kristin & Sundie, Jill, 2013. "Reconceptualizing materialism as identity goal pursuits: Functions, processes, and consequences," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 66(8), pages 1179-1185.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:644:y:2012:i:1:p:50-69. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.