Disrupting Boundaries: Consumer Cultures and Borderlands

In this presentation, I will explore how the study of consumer cultures in borderland regions disrupts habits of thinking central to each sub-field of historical inquiry as well as disciplinary boundaries.  It is based on my on-going research into the history of consumer culture in the U.S. and in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.  First I will address how the history of consumption in many borderland regions insists on the importance of including scarcity with abundance among the pre-eminent conditions that shaped consumer culture. Second, I will show how the history of borderlands’ consumer economies and cultures draws attention toward the role border play as bridges, not just barriers, to economic, cultural and social exchanges.  Then I will explore a few examples of how investigating the history of the formation of institutions and practices associated with consumer culture in borderlands’ regions deepens the understanding of the processes of globalization, particularly as concerns two of its crucial characteristic, hybridity and inequality.  Finally, I will conclude with several examples of how the historical study of consumer cultures in borderlands depends on the ability and willingness to cross disciplinary boundaries.  In all, this paper explores the disruption of boundaries within and between disciplines as well as nations.