Patricia A. Banks (Harvard University P.h.D. & A.M./Spelman College B.A.) is Co-Editor-in-Chief of Poetics, Chair of the Section on the Sociology of Consumers and Consumption at the American Sociological Association, and a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Mount Holyoke College. In 2018-2019 Banks was in residence at Stanford University as a CASBS Fellow. Banks has also been at Harvard University as a Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation Fellow and Non-Resident Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research and received fellowships or grants from institutions such as the UNCF/Mellon Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and the American Association of University Women. At Mount Holyoke College Banks is a faculty member in the Program in Africana Studies and the Program in Entrepreneurship, Organizations, and Society.
As a cultural sociologist her research elucidates how social boundaries, such as those related to race and ethnicity, intersect with consumption and consumption-related processes. She explores these dynamics in areas such as art patronage, philanthropy, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and dress codes. Banks’ research has been mentioned in media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Le Quotidien de l'Art, Artnet News, Public Books, and Yahoo! News and she has appeared on The Special Report with Areva Martin.
Banks is the author of four books including, Black Culture Inc: How Ethnic Community Support Pays for Corporate America (Stanford University Press, winner of the 2023 American Sociological Association Oliver Cromwell Cox Book Award from The Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities, a Gold Medal Axiom Business Book Award, and a Bronze Medal Independent Publisher Book Award), Race, Ethnicity, and Consumption: A Sociological View (Routledge 2020), Diversity and Philanthropy at African American Museums (Routledge Research in Museum Studies 2019) and Represent: Art and Identity Among the Black Upper-Middle Class (Routledge 2010). Banks has published articles in journals such as Poetics, the Journal of Consumer Culture, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Cultural Sociology, Qualitative Sociology, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Law and Social Change, and the MIT Sloan Management Review. Her research involves various methods including in-depth interviews, visual analysis, participant observation, and archival research. Represent is the first major empirical and theoretical analysis of art collecting as a practice of black identity construction. In other research projects Banks investigates philanthropy at African American museums, corporate support for the arts, the markets for contemporary art by black artists and African artists, and dress code discrimination in schools.
Banks serves on the editorial board of Cultural Sociology, the advisory council for the Donors of Color: Giving Trends project at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, Indiana University, and the advisory board of the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum. She is also serving a three year elected term as the Secretary-Treasurer of the Sociology of Consumers and Consumption section of the American Sociological Association. Previously, Banks has served in elected positions as a Council Member for the Sociology of Culture section of the American Sociological Association and as Secretary-Treasurer of the American Sociological Association Section on Race, Gender and Class. Her work with students has been recognized by a teaching award from the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University and election as the Junior Faculty Baccalaureate Speaker at Mount Holyoke College. Banks has lectured and given talks on issues related to culture internationally and nationally. She is also the creator of the African American Museums Database (AAMD) which is a digital archive that allows researchers and other users to search for over 300 African American museums and related organizations across the United States. For more information about how her research on art collecting and racial identity has been incorporated into the sociology of art see
Sociology of the Arts: Exploring Fine and Popular Forms and
Sociology Looks at the Arts.
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