Book Description

"Davila has entered the back rooms of a new and important sector of the advertising industry, shedding light on the people and businesses that are working to exploit the marketing hot buttons of Hispanic USA. Latinos, Inc. could become a scholarly milestone, a vivid portrayal of the strange marriage between cultural anthropology and merchandising strategies that forms an elemental ingredient of U.S. consumer society."—Stuart Ewen, author of PR! A Social History of Spin "A work derived from prodigious fieldwork that sets a standard for the ethnography of cultural institutions in their varied corporate forms and market participations. Latinos Inc. provides a rich, fascinating, and fresh empirical venue for theories of identity and ethnicity in the U.S."—George Marcus, author of Ethnography Through Thick &Thin "An insightful and compelling account of Hispanic marketing and television as it becomes a significant force in U.S. corporate media. In its rigorous attention to the culture of marketing, Latinos, Inc. fills a significant void within the literature on mass communications, marketing, and television studies."—Chon A. Noriega, author of Shot in America: Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema "Davila is the first to show us the world of Latin media through the eyes of advertising and programming professionals; the first to comprehend how Spanish language network television has reconfigured Latino identity; and the first to fully delineate the plurality and heterogeneity of Latino audiences. She enables us to understand the formative role played by advertising and commercial culture in shaping the contours of contemporary Latino/a identities. Latinos, Inc. sets a new standard for scholarship in ethnic studies and cultural studies."—George Lipsitz, author of The Possessive Investment in Whiteness : How White People Profit from Identity Politics