TOTAL MARKET AMERICAN

In Total Market American (Duke University Press, 2025), I explore how the U.S. advertising industry turns ideas about racial difference into data and marketing strategies, carrying the legacy of colonial racial science into the digital age. Drawing on ethnographic research in agencies and at industry events, I show how advertising operates as a key arena where racial categories are reinforced for profit through what I call the industry’s racial information system—networks of practices, people, and technologies that classify consumers by race.