Fashion And Consumer Culture

Fashion And Consumer Culture

Sociological studies of fashion tend to relate the studies of fashion to two central sociological themes: social control and social change. Sociologists who have dealt with fashion as a mechanism of social control have focused their attention on the relationship between fashion and custom. The question is to what extent fashion is oriented towards innovation (departure from established custom) and to what extent it is a mechanism of convention.

Fashion as a mode of social control can be structured around 3 issues:

1) the relationship between fashion and social stratification: does fashion mirror the social structure or does it represent an equalising force? is fashion an exculsionary (and exclusive) discourse originated by the mainstream élite, or does it give voice to marginalised discourses?

2) the functions, ideological meanings, and rationale of the uniform in general, school uniform in particular. (this section will involve a group research project that would provide illustration of ideological critique through critical discourse analysis).

3) body alterations (tattoo, piercing, cosmetic surgery): is it a discourse of empowerment and control over one's body, or is it locked into the terms of reference of patriarchal ideology.

1) fashion and stratification

Theorists from Veblen to Simmel (trickle down or conspicuous consumption theories) regard differentiation and stratification as essential preconditions of fashion. Others like Smelser and Blumer regard fashion as an expression of collective behaviour: a movement that is not concerned about a change in the social order, but confines itself to "positive wish fulfilment". People follow fashion not in order to imitate their social superiors, but because they want to be "in fashion" as capturing the mood of the times.

As opposed to class stratification theorists who see fashion as a means by the elite to distinguish themselves (whose subsequent change occurs when the lower strata start emulating those fashions, when they trickle down and are no longer exclusive). Some theorists (e.g. Davis) point out that not only do fashions fail to trickle down, but often the inspiration for new fashions start from the street. Others (e.g. Crane) argue that consumer society replaced class with "lifestyle groups". Still others, like Bourdieu and Baudrillard see social hierarchy reflected in subtle practices of education and consumption that underlie apparent social change.

Tseëlon, Efrat (1995). The masque of femininity. The presentation of woman in everyday life. London: Sage. (pp 128-135).

Crane, Diane (2000). Fashion and its social agendas: class gender and identity in clothing. Chicago University Press.

Veblen, Thorstein (1899/1912) The theory of the leisure class. New York: Macmillan.

Simmel, Georg (1904/1957). Fashion. International Quarterly, 10, 130-155. Reprinted in American Journal of Sociology, 62, 541-558.

Blumer, Herbert (1969). Fashion: From class differentiation to collective selection. Sociological Quarterly, 10, 275-291.

Davis, Fred (1991). Herbert Blumer and the study of fashion: a reminiscence and a critique. Symbolic Interaction, 14, 1-21.

Horowitz, Tamar (1975). From élite fashion to mass fashion. Archives Europeenes de Sociologie, 16, 283-295.

Bourdieu, Pierre (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste, trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

McRobbie, Angela (1989) Second-hand dresses and the role of the ragmarket. In A. McRobbie (ed.) Zoot suits and second hand dresses: An anthology of fashion and music. London: Macmillan.

Crane, Diane (1999). Clothing behaviour as non-verbal resistance: Marginal women and alternative dress in the nineteenth century. Fashion Theory, 3, 241-268.

Walsh, Margaret (1979). The democratization of fashion: The emergence of the women's dress pattern industry. Journal of American History, 66, 299-313.

2) the case of uniforms

Clothing styles are carriers of a wide range of ideological agendas. For centuries uniforms have been used to impose social identities on more or less willing subjects. This form of social control was increasingly evident in the nineteenth century through the imposition of uniforms and dress codes. To the traditional (e.g. military, religious) form new types of occupational clothing were added replacing traditional forms that hed disappeared. With the simplification of upper and middle class clothing in the course of the nineteenth century, uniforms were used to express social distinctions and status boundaries that could no longer be expressed as blatantly in regular attire. The major categories of uniforms that existed during this period were: uniforms of public servants, occupational clothes of private empolyers, domestic servants, students. Unlike the first three categories, school uniforms, especially for girls, did signify "alternative dress" and "marginal public space".

Crane, Diane (2000). Fashion and its social agendas: class, gender, and identity in clothing. University of Chicago Press. (pp 87-95).

Abler, Thomas S. (1999). Hinterland warriors and military dress: European empires and exotic uniforms. Oxford: Berg.

Roche, Daniel (1994). The culture of clothing: Dress and fashion in Ancient Regim. Cambridge. (ch. 9: the discipline of appearances: the prestige of uniform).

Ewin, Elizabeth (1975). Women in uniform through the centuries. Totowa: NJ: Rowan and Littlefield.

Foucault, Michel (1980). The history of sexuality, Vol. 1: an introduction, trans. by Robert Hurley. NY: Vintage.

Foucault, Michel (1975). Discipline and Punish: The birth of the prison, trans. Alan Sheridan. NY: Pantheon Books.

Maynard, Margaret (1995). Fashioned from penury: Dress as cultural practice in colonial Australia. Cambridge UP.

Joseph, Nathan (1986). Uniforms and nonuniforms: Communication through clothing. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Joseph, Nathan and Alex Nicholas (1972). The uniform: A sociological perspective. American Journal of Sociology, 77, 719-730.

McVeigh, Brian (1997). Wearing ideology: how uniforms discipline minds and bodies in Japan. Fashion Theory, 1, 189-213.

McVeigh, Brian (2000). Wearing ideology: The uniformity of self-presentation in Japan. Oxford, Berg.

Harte, N. B. (1976). State control of dress and social change in pre-industrial England. In D. D. Cleman and A. H. John (eds.) Trade, government and economy in pre-industrial England. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson.

Hunt Alan (1996). Governance of the consuming passions - A history of sumptuary laws. London: Macmillan.

Mitchell, T. (1990). Everyday metaphors of power. Theory & Society, 19, 545-77.

Johnson, Kim K. P. and Lennon Sharon J. (1999). Appearance and power. Oxford: Berg.

Hodder, Ian (ed.) (1989). The meaning of things: Material culture and symbolic expression. London: Unwin Hyman.

Methodological approaches to the study of the ideology of uniforms

Jones, Michael Owen (1996). Studying organizational symbolism. (Qualitative research methods series, vol. 30). Sage.

Potter, Jonathan and Edwards, Derek (1992). Discursive psychology. Sage.

Riessman, Catherine (1994). Narrative analysis. (Qualitative research methods series, vol. 30). Sage.

Potter, Jonathan (1996). Representing reality: Discourse, rhetoric and social construction. Sage.

Harré Rom and Stearns Peter (1995). Discursive psychology in practice. Sage.

Titscher, Stefan, Meyer, Michael, Wodak Ruth and Vetter Eva (2000). Methods of text and discourse analysis: In search of meaning. London: Sage.

Wood, Linda (2000). Doing discourse analysis. London: Sage.

Bauer, Martin and Gaskell, George (2000). Qualitative researching with text, image and sound. London: Sage.

3) body alterations

Appearance has been repeatedly shown to have a potent and immediate effect on others in a wide range of circumstances. In particular women's appearance seems to have a key role to self and identity. "a woman is made to feel continually insecure about her physical appearance, and simultaneously so dependent on it " (Chapkis, 1986, p. 140). Women (and to some extent men) are willing to go to dangerous lengths and to endure painful procedures to 'improve' and alter their appearance.

The increasing popularity of practices of body modifications such as dieting, tattoing, piercing and cosmetic surgery attests to theimportance of appearance in social relations. But some of the participants in such practices claim to be resisting rather than reifying hegemonic influences.

Cahill Sharon and Riley Sarah (2001). Resistances and reconciliations: Women and body art. In Guy Ali, Green Eileen, and Banim Maura (eds) Through the wardrobe: Women's relationships with their clothes. Oxford: Berg.

Biggs, T. M., Cukier, J., & Worthing, L. F. (1982). Augmentation mammaplasty: A review of 18 years. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, 69(3), 445-450.

Gilman, Sander (1999). Making the body beautiful: A cultural history of aesthetic surgery. Princeston University Press.

Haikin, Elizabeth (1997). Venus envy: A history of cosmetic surgery. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Davis Kathy (1998). Pygmalions in plastic surgery, Health, 2, 23-40.

Davis Kathy (1997). My body is my art: Cosmetic surgery as feminist utopia, European Journal of Women's Studies, 4, 23-27.

McCorquodale, Duncan (ed.) (1996). Orlan: This is my body...this is my software. London: Black dog.

Orlan (1995). I do not want to look like...: Orlan on becoming-Orlan, Women's Art Magazine, 64, 5-10.

Ribeiro, Aileen (1986). Dress and morality. London: Batsford.

Ince, Kate (1998). Operations of redress: Orlan, the body and its limits. Fashion Theory, 2, 111-127.

Gotch, Christopher and Scutt Ronald (1974). Skin deep: The mystery of tattooing. London: Peter Davies.

Moos, David (1996). Memories of being: Orlan's theater of the self, Art & Text, 54, 66-73.

Madame Chinchilla (1997). Stewed, screwed and tattooed. Isadore Press.

Marcia-Lees, Frances, Sharpe, Patricia (eds) (1992). Tattoo, torture, mutilation and adornment: the denaturalization of the body in culture and text. State University of NY Press.

Mifflin, Margot (1997). Bodies of subversion: a secret history of women and tattoo. Juno.

Rubin Arnold (ed) (1995). Masks of civilization: artistic transformations of the human body. California University Press.

Rufus, C. Camphausen (1997). Return of the tribal: a celebration of body adornment: piercing, tattooing, scarification, body painting. Inner Traditions Intl ltd

Sanders, Clinton R. (1989). Customizing the body: The art and culture of tatooing. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

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Consuming brotherhood: men's culture, style and recreation as consumer culture, 1880-1930. - In her exploration of the historical relationship between American men and cosmetics, Kathy Peiss outlines how the late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century discourse of heterosexual masculinity denied and covered up men's cosmetics use by defining men's numerous grooming products as toiletries rather than cosmetics or beauty products. This denial of the feminine "other" lurking within men was so sustained and successful that it became a "self-evident statement" of twentieth-century culture that "real men" do not use cosmetics.