Lisa Pe帽aloza, associate professor of marketing at the University of Colorado at Boulder, will show and discuss a documentary film she made examining the Mexican American community and the market on May 5.
The event will begin at 7 p.m. in the Chautauqua Community House at 900 Baseline Road in Boulder. The talk is part of the 2003-04 Chancellor's Community Lecture Series and is free and open to the public.
The 47-minute film, "Generaciones/Generations: Cultural Identity, Memory and the Market," is drawn from a larger study of 48 Mexican Americans of different generations, from the 1940s through the present.
"Everybody is a market nowadays, not just Latinos," Pe帽aloza said. "Yet we know surprisingly little about how people feel about being targeted, how this has changed over time and across generations, and what the market can and cannot do in community development." The documentary was filmed in San Antonio.
Pe帽aloza's research looks at how consumers express culture in their consumer behavior, and, in turn, how marketers deal with the various cultures of consumers.
"This is an important issue in the West, where many of our major cities include significant numbers of Latinos, yet this group as a whole lags behind other groups socioeconomically," she said. "While the market is touted as a solution to many current social issues, it is important to recognize its strengths and weaknesses as a form of social policy."
The event is one of nine public lectures presented by CU-Boulder faculty in 2003-04 on the theme of "Healing the West." The series is sponsored by the CU-Boulder Chancellor's Office, the CU-Boulder Center of the American West and the Colorado Chautauqua Association.
The two-year series will conclude with a final lecture to be announced. For more information call the CU-Boulder Office of Community Relations at (303) 492-7084.