Arbiters of Race: Cultural Intermediaries, Racism, and Consumer Industries

by Erik T. Withers (Editor), David L. Brunsma (Editor)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781041135692
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	11/12/2025
Pages:	244
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Erik T. Withers is Assistant Professor in the Sociology, Criminology, and Anthropology Department at the University of Wisconsin–River Falls, where he also serves as the coordinator of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexualities Studies program. He researches and teaches in the subject areas of race and ethnicity, gender and sexualities, and consumer culture. He and his wife (Vanessa) have three daughters (Harper, Ellison, and Hope). In his free time, he explores Western Wisconsin with them and coaches their ice hockey and softball teams.

David L. Brunsma is Professor of Sociology at Virginia Tech. He is founding coeditor of Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, the official journal of the Section of Racial and Ethnic Minorities at the American Sociological Association, as well as the founding coeditor of the University of Georgia Press book series of the same name. His research is currently focused on understanding the ways that whitespaces function across multiple domains of social and cultural life. He lives, learns, and loves in Blacksburg, VA, with his family.

Table of Contents

Introduction Erik T. Withers and David L. Brunsma; Section I: Arbitering Race in the Media; 1. Organizations as Cultural Intermediaries? A Case Study of a Conservative Think Tank, Annie Jones and J. Scott Carter; 2. Cultural Intermediaries Promoting Critical Racial Consciousness: The Potential Public Pedagogy of Podcasts, Jan Martin Meij; Section II: Arbitering Race in Creative Industries; 3. Behind the Scenes: The Institutional Uses of “Diversity” in the Production of MoMA’s Film Curatorship, Tania Aparicio; 4. Curating Music Festivals: The Racialized Entanglements in the Curation of Music Festivals, Jo Haynes; Section III: Arbitering Race in Bodies; 5. “The Darkest Shade”: Mediating the Politics of Skin Tone, Jordan Foster; 6. Cosmetic Surgeons as Arbiters of a Beautiful Nose: The Nariz Negroide in Brazil, Carole Myers; Section IV: Arbitering Race in Consumer Goods and Services; 7. Becoming Tastemakers: The Affective Labor of Latinx Millennials in the Specialty Coffee Industry, Karina Santellano; 8. Justice, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Déjà Vu: Cultural Intermediaries in the Fashion Apparel Retail Industry, Sherita M. Cuffee and Shelly L. Brown-Jeffy; 9. Racial Capitalism on the Retail Sales Floor: Examining Cultural Arbiters as Organizationally Embedded Actors and Informal Practices that Perpetuate the Racial Ordering of Consumers, Cassi Pittman Claytor; Section V: Arbitering Race in Racialized Space; 10. “You Almost Can’t Describe It”: A Case Study of the National Urban League Conference for Black Space, Social Movement Communities, and Cultural Intermediaries, Candace C. Robinson; 11. Commercial Gentrification and Local Businesses as Cultural Intermediaries in the Racialization of Space, Steven Tuttle

Editorial Reviews

“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

From the Publisher