Consumer Cultures Meet the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, the seventh in the Clements Center’s symposia series, considers the dynamics of consumer capitalism in the borderlands between 1848 and the present. Convened more than a decade after NAFTA removed restrictions on the cross-border movement of goods and services, though not of people, this symposium considers the role of the border in the consumer culture of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. As with previous symposia, this effort will result in a book of essays that SMU's Clements Department of History faculty member Alexis McCrossen will edit.

How have scarcity and abundance shaped the borderlands? The region's poverty--manifested  in the millions of residents who follow subsistence regimens--forces scholars to consider how consumer culture, now considered the dominant form of culture worldwide, works even within economies of scarcity. The boom in assembly plants, cities, and contraband --each central to mature consumer cultures--emerges out of an abundance of natural resources, investment capital, entrepreneurial energy, and tractable labor. This conference aims to bring the borderlands, the American southwest, and the Mexican North to the attention of scholars in history, anthropology, sociology, and geography who study consumer capitalism and culture.  By the same token, it also seeks to show how the imperatives of consumption have shaped the borderlands.  In doing so, it will complicate our understandings of both scarcity and abundance.
 

The presentations range widely, from analysis of the consumerist strains underlying the nineteenth-century ideology of ‘manifest destiny,’ to exploration of markets for leisure-time activities and real estate in the United States-Mexico borderlands, to consideration of Mexican migrants as consumers. Most of the presenters straddle the border by addressing such topics as herbal-supplement company OmniLife's transnational sales' strategies, two Mexican brothers' motion picture exhibition circuits a hundred years ago, how Juarenses talk about consumption of imported trash and second-hand goods, the smuggling of narcotics, and the place of a gendered consumer politics in the ongoing struggle to put an end to the murder of Mexican women on the border.

This symposium is approved for CEU credit of 4 hours (morning or afternoon session) or 7 hours (all day session).  CEU Certificate will be awarded to attendee at the end of the session/s attended.  Please see registration page to sign up for certification.

Click here for information about the schedule of events and titles of the participants' presentations which will become chapters in the edited volume after the symposium.
Click here for information about the participants.