"Why 'Separate But Equal' in Commodity Exchange and Consumption?"

Bobby Wilson
University of Alabama 

Nov. 8, 2004
7:30 p.m.
The Forum

Most of our day-to-day activity is spent at or near the ever-increasing number of spaces of consumption, yet the role that race plays in their development often goes unacknowledged. In this talk Bobby Wilson focuses on race as an historically- and geographically-specific construct in the sphere of commodity exchange and consumption. He examines the effects that the changing status of blacks – from slaves to consumers – had on the postbellum American South.

Bobby M. Wilson, Professor of Geography at the University of Alabama, received his PhD from Clark University. He is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners and has been active in Community Development and Planning in the City of Birmingham, Alabama. His research focuses on political economy and race, and on race and segregation in the sphere of commodity exchange and consumption. He has published two books: American Johannesburg: Industrialization and Racial Transformation in Birmingham, and Race and Place: The Civil Rights and Neighborhood Movement in Birmingham (both published by Rowman and Littlefield in 2000).