Differentiating Consumers: Categories of Human Differentiation in Food and Migration Discourses in Twentieth-Century U.S. Consumer Capitalism (D05 (ehem.B06))

• Subject Area: European and American Literary and Cultural Studies
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 442261292

The project focuses on the “consumer” as a key category in modern societies. Using the U.S. as an example, it examines how “conceptual entrepreneurs” from academia, business, and civil society generated and normalized the figure of the consumer. The project focuses on immigration and food policy as key arenas for establishing criteria for civic belonging, social inclusion, economic participation and cultural visibility in the epochal transition to a consumer-oriented economy and society. The project thus opens up new approaches to analyzing modern consumer societies from the perspective of categories of human differentiation.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1482: Studies in Human Differentiation
• Applicant Institution: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
• Project Head: Professor Axel Schäfer, Ph.D.