“Names doing rounds”: On brands in the bazaar economy

Maitrayee Deka,Adam Arvidsson

doi:10.1177/1469540521989396

Maitrayee Deka, Adam Arvidsson

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/1469540521989396

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Abstract

This article draws on fieldwork form Delhi’s garment and electronics bazaars to articulate an alternative perspective on the role of brands in the global bazaar economy. Knockoffs and counterfeit brands have mostly been viewed as problematic manifestations of counterfeiting and piracy, or framed in terms of authenticity or marginal practices of imitation. In this article, we suggest that bazaar brands also function as central to a growing popular innovation system able to provide material goods as well as immaterial experiences to the world’s poorer consumers in ways that stay in close contacts with the mediated fluctuations of popular affects. Bazaar brands develop a unique relationship with consumers based on an ability to seize the moment rather than the creation of enduring loyalties. We suggest that bazaar brands can be understood as central to an emerging postcapitalist consumer economy that has been substantially empowered by the spread of digital technologies.

Highlights

Brands inside and outside capitalismBrands have developed into key institutions of global consumer society
This article draws on fieldwork form Delhi’s garment and electronics bazaars to articulate an alternative perspective on the role of brands in the global bazaar economy
We suggest that rather than a matter of counterfeits and imitation, bazaar brands are central to a growing popular innovation system

Summary

Brands inside and outside capitalism

Brands have developed into key institutions of global consumer society. They add additional dimensions of symbolic or “immaterial” value to goods, permitting new forms of consumer identification and affect (Lury, 2004). In the capitalist economy, brands have developed into the most important “intangible asset” to substantiate the value of goods and, importantly, corporations. This development has been paralleled by the evolution of powerful disciplines like market research and brand management, and lately “data driven” managerial techniques that operate at the level of information flows (Carah, 2017). Brands have evolved to guide the almost total integration of commercial culture within the value logics of financial capitalism

Bazaar economy

Postcapitalist brands?

Note on methods and the field

Brands in the bazaars

Sticker book

Conclusion