Street Art, Sweet Art? Reclaiming the “Public” in Public Place

Consumer research has paid scant attention to public goods, especially at a time when the contestation between categorizing public and private goods and controlling public goods is pronounced. In this multisited ethnography, we explore the ways in which active consumers negotiate meanings about the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Journal of consumer research Vol. 37; no. 3; pp. 511 - 529
Main Authors Visconti, Luca M., Sherry Jr, John F., Borghini, Stefania, Anderson, Laurel
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford The University of Chicago Press 01.10.2010
Oxford University Press
Subjects
Aesthetics
Cities
Commercial art
Consumer economics
Consumer goods
Consumer research
Consumption
Discourse analysis
Poetry
Public art
Public goods
Public space
Public spaces
Street art
Studies
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Summary:Consumer research has paid scant attention to public goods, especially at a time when the contestation between categorizing public and private goods and controlling public goods is pronounced. In this multisited ethnography, we explore the ways in which active consumers negotiate meanings about the consumption of a particular public good, public space. Using the context of street art, we document four main ideologies of public space consumption that result from the interaction, both conflict and common intent, of urban dwellers and street artists. We show how public space can be contested as private and commercialized, or offered back as a collective good, where sense of belonging and dialogue restore it to a meaningful place. We demonstrate how the common nature of space both stimulates dialectical and dialogical exchanges across stakeholders and fuels forms of layered agency.
ISSN:0093-5301
1537-5277
DOI:10.1086/652731