My intentions in this essay are fivefold: (1) to show how the discourses of
qualitative inquiry and cultural studies in the seventh moment can be put
to critical advantage by consumer researchers; (2) to discuss the cultural
studies assumptions that define a consumer research agenda; (3) to offer a
set of interpretive, methodological, and ethical criteria that can be used
by consumer researchers; (4) to apply these criteria to a concrete case, a
reading of the Hollywood "hood" films of the last decade; and thereby (5) t
o establish the relevance of this approach for the practices of critical co
nsumer research. Throughout I use examples from the Black Arts Movement of
the 1970s.