Crossing Visionary Boundaries

As a social construct, race is a key site of hierarchy upon which marketplaces rest. A broad cross-section of scholarship demonstrates the role of race and racism in prominent present-day global markets. For example, the banking, textiles, and soft commodities markets are deeply rooted in racist colonial and imperialist practices. Racial dynamics remain central to contemporary marketplace operations across the globe, such as advertising, service delivery, gentrification and consumer profiling.

Despite many insightful scholarly works that investigate race and related topics (diversity, multiculturalism) within marketplaces, extant research has traditionally been conducted in distinct disciplinary fields with little cross-pollination between the social sciences, creative arts, and business worlds. Furthermore, few efforts have been made to compare and contrast the influence of geographical context and disciplinary approaches to understanding “race and markets”. Understanding how manifestations of race and racism impact, and have been impacted by, market relations enables scholars and advocates to more effectively address complexities associated with racial privilege, power, and vulnerabilities during a period of global neoliberal market proliferation.

Combining critical race theory and photovoice methodology, this project aims to assemble a cross-national and cross-disciplinary team of scholars interested in race-based marketplace issues and local community stakeholders (community activists, artists, practitioners, policy actors) to discuss, compare and contrast their views on “race and markets”. France is the research context as its Republican Model constrains discussions on race and provides a challenging and provocative ethos for such a cross-national dialogue.

The photovoice workshop will take place prior to the 2019 Race In the Marketplace (RIM) Forum in Paris. The team will engage with local stakeholders in critical conversations about race in France, collect field data concerning “race and markets”, share initial findings during the Forum, and develop a long-term collaboration plan that will yield traditional and creative forms of research dissemination.