Kimberly McClain DaCosta

In residence Spring 2008

Associate Professor of African and African American Studies and of Social Studies

Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Address: 104 Mt. Auburn Street, Floor 3R

Telephone:  617.384.8351

Email: dacosta@fas.harvard.edu

Biography

Kimberly McClain DaCosta is Associate Professor African and African American Studies and of Social Studies at Harvard. A sociologist, she writes and teaches about the intersections of race and family, and consumer culture.

Project

“Black Magic: African American Advertisers and the Production of Social Identity”

Black Magic: African American Advertisers and the Production of Social Identity is an ethnographic case study of an advertising firm that targets African American consumers. The project centers on African American marketing firms and the process through which they create commercial representations of black people. I focus on the concrete activities within the firm (how marketers conduct market research on African Americans, how they determine and attempt to shape the “needs” of black consumers, how they conceptualize the cultural differences that warrant the creation of advertising by and for African Americans, and how they distill those concepts of difference into advertisements). I also analyze the relations between minority firms, “general market” (i.e., white consumer driven) firms and corporate clients in order to understand the set of interests that shape image production. The project offers an institutional analysis of an industry that has particular influence in shaping contemporary concepts of race. In so doing, it offers insight into the ways that cultural depictions of African Americans, and concepts of race generally, are linked to concrete practices and a broader set of social relations.