Arbiters of Race
Cultural Intermediaries, Racism, and Consumer Industries
David L Brunsma editor Erik T Withers editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd
Publishing:13th Nov '25
£39.99
This title is due to be published on 13th November, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
Advancing the conversation on cultural intermediation by adding the muchoverlooked reality of racism, this edited collection offers a much-needed critical and contemporary focus on the ever-changing landscape of race in the marketplace.
Arbiters of Race: Cultural Intermediaries, Racism, and Consumer Industries addresses the pressing need, in the third decade of the 21st century, to push social theory to incorporate race and racism in our understanding of cultural intermediation—to recognize that cultural intermediaries play a crucial role in framing goods, services, ideas, and behaviors as legitimate and worthy, instilling goods with meanings by engaging in specific cultural narratives that have a fundamentally racial character of consumer industries.
Having changed dramatically since the 1980s and 1990s, cultural and creative markets have become unrecognizable such that cultural intermediaries today manipulate social and cultural tastes as actors in the consumer market to construct value and meaning for products, practices, and consumers—particularly in the cultural and creative industries.
The essays in this collection acknowledge the very real risk of reproducing the very racist structures these markets and industries were founded on, and go beyond past work on cultural intermediaries to challenge the exclusionary racial structures within which cultural markets historically and currently operate.
“Arbiters of Race offers a much-needed critical and contemporary focus on the ever-changing landscape of race in unexposed areas in the US, Canada, and the UK. The book is a timely collection of essays on an important contemporary global intellectual issue. This volume epitomizes what is best about sociology.”
Kimberley Ducey, Professor of Sociology, University of Winnipeg
“This book, with its focus on cultural intermediaries and consumer industries, is timely and of utmost importance. As an edited collection it brings together key scholars and researchers in the field to produce a collaborative and relevant overview of a pressing topic in which resources like this are very needed. A strongly commendable volume with an undoubtedly long shelf-life.”
John Solomos, Professor of Sociology, Warwick University, and Editor-in-Chief of Ethnic and Racial Studies Journal
"Through a dedicated focus on cultural intermediaries, Arbiters of Race, offers a new and important lens on cultural markets and inequality."
Patricia A. Banks, Professor of Sociology, Mount Holyoke College
"Arbiters of Race is a timely intervention that brings race and racism into sharp focus within the study of cultural intermediaries. Its rich and varied case studies critique the limits of diversity discourse—particularly where it serves as symbolic inclusion without structural change—while also highlighting how genuine diversity within the ranks of intermediaries can contest exclusionary norms and foster more expansive definitions of legitimacy, expertise, and taste. This volume is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the racial politics of contemporary consumer culture."
Jennifer Smith Maguire, Associate Dean for Research and Innovation, Sheffield Hallam University
“This fantastic new volume brings race into the study of cultural intermediaries. Each of the chapters is well-researched while also managing to feel fresh and creative. Essential reading for scholars seeking to understand how race gets refracted and reinforced within contemporary cultural life.”
Eli R. Wilson, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of New Mexico
ISBN: 9781032738451
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 450g
226 pages