Timothy de Waal Malefyt, BBDO and Parsons, The New School for Design
This paper explores the practices and ideologies of US consumers as they employ credit and debit cards in their pursuit of the American Dream. From ethnographic research on credit card use for a major US credit card corporation, this paper discusses the way consumers first talk about their credit cards as a practical “tool” for helping them mediate and manage the range of economic transactions in their daily lives. However, a deeper analysis of their actual credit card practices reveals that their uses and purposes are not purely economic, but are cultural in nature. In particular, they use their cards as personal, social and economic strategies for pursuing and maintaining the American dream of upward mobility, even as they attempt to manage and negotiate issues of class and identity in the social and cultural landscape.
This paper further reveals that the strategies they employ for carrying out their dream operate by constructing and negotiating symbolic and rational boundaries of experience. Against associations of “freedom” that much of the credit card industry promotes, card users employ practices and personal strategies to organize card types (credit, debit) and card institutional associations (i.e., Staples, Kroger, Chase) into personal, social and economic pursuits (i.e., my fun card, my emergency card, my food card, and so forth). This practice reveals that credit card type, card association and card use, separately and in combination, help mediate symbolic categories of leisure, home, work, and play, as they organize pragmatic functions for daily living and future aspirations. In sum, this paper shows that credit card use among American consumers extends beyond rational economic practices to mediate and organize a symbolic world of lived experiences and aspired dreams.
About the author
Timothy de Waal Malefyt is Vice President, Director of Cultural Discoveries at BBDO Worldwide Advertising in NYC. He is also adjunct Professor in the department of Design and Management, at Parsons School of Design, (the New School University) in NYC. At BBDO, Timothy heads up an in-agency ethnographic consulting practice, which explores the meaning of brands and consumption for a range of clients in financial services, food industry, packaged goods, health and beauty, automotive, and digital communications and technology. At Parsons, Timothy teaches courses on advertising, design research methods, and consumerism and shopping. His research interests include design, marketing research, culture and consumption and the anthropology of business. His co-edited volume, Advertising Cultures from Berg Publishers brings together a collection of ethnographies which explore a behind-the–scenes analysis of the link between advertising and larger cultural forces, as well as a rare look into the workings of agencies themselves. Timothy is the recipient of Fulbright and NSF research grants to Spain. He received his PhD in cultural anthropology from Brown University. He is widely quoted in popular media, including Business Week, USA Today, The New York Times. He has also presented papers at The American Anthropology Meetings, the Society for Applied Anthropology and the EPIC conferences.