Consuming transnational fashion in London and Mumbai

Abstract

Drawing on focus group research in London and Mumbai, this paper charts the changing social and cultural contours of transnational fashion consumption. Transnationality is approached as a complex social field, participation in which is not restricted to the members of specific ethnically-defined transnational communities. Following a discussion of the nature of transnational fashion, the paper explores the discursive practices of a wide range of consumers with different degrees of investment in this transnational field encompassing differences of gender and generation, education and occupation. We highlight the existence of multiple forms of modernity (rather than a simple gradient from Western modernity to Eastern tradition), with social and cultural change taking place at an uneven pace and subject to periodic disruption and temporary reversals. In contrast to more linear notions of globalization, defined in terms of the relentless erosion of local difference, our research demonstrates the persistence of locally-specific cultures of consumption in both London and Mumbai. Drawing from Appadurai’s work on the social life of things and Bourdieu’s analysis of the sociology of taste, we attempt to characterise these locally specific consumption cultures. We argue against conventional accounts of ‘authenticity’ as an innate property of particular social groups or particular goods, suggesting that the meaning of goods is defined by their active appropriation in specific contexts of use.