Advertising Agency: Producing Racial Imagery of Asian Americans

Northwestern University, Evanston IL

Investigators

Abstract

Dr. Shalini Shankar, of Northwestern University, will investigate how the many contemporary public meanings of race and ethnicity in the United States today may be affected by the mirco-level processes through which advertising is developed and produced. She will focus particularly on images of Asian Americans created by first and second generation Asian immigrants employed in these agencies, who must reformulate the numerous Asian and Pacific Island nationalities encompassed by the term "Asian" to reflect its ethnic, national, religious, and linguistic diversity, while also making "Asian American" a relevant marketing category for commercial circulation and consumption. The researcher will employ a mix of social science methodologies, including participant observation, discourse analysis, and interviews, to collect data in three New York City agencies. She also will use archival resources to analyze historical and current campaigns featuring Asian Americans. The project is significant because it will further understandings of the processes by which racial and ethnic meanings are actively negotiated from census and market research, produced for commercial purposes, and circulated in a variety of media. In this way, the research offers an ethnographic and sociolinguistic complement to more common textual analyses of racist advertisements. The project will chronicle the emergence and interworkings of the Asian American segment of the advertising industry, and use these findings to extend studies of globalization, diaspora, and new immigration to the United States.