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Talking about Consumption: How an Indian Middle Class Dissociates from Middle-Class Life

Members of the middle class in the Indian city of Baroda employ a common moral Discourse on consumption, one that is shaped through the operationalization of historically rooted ideals of community, family solidarity and asceticism. These ideals are set against the experience of urban middle-class l...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Margit van Wessel
Format: Printed Book
Published: Cultural Dynamics 2004; 16; 93 2004
Subjects:
Online Access:http://10.26.1.76/ks/00719.pdf
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100 |a Margit van Wessel 
245 |a Talking about Consumption: How an Indian Middle Class Dissociates from Middle-Class Life 
260 |c 2004 
260 |b Cultural Dynamics 2004; 16; 93 
520 |a Members of the middle class in the Indian city of Baroda employ a common moral Discourse on consumption, one that is shaped through the operationalization of historically rooted ideals of community, family solidarity and asceticism. These ideals are set against the experience of urban middle-class life. This discourse describes consumer culture as debased materialism, while at the same time presenting it as central to Middle-class social life. This article explores the nature of the tension apparent in this contradiction, and finds that employers of this discourse accept the inescapable nature of status battles around consumption while denying it legitimacy and real significance for the constitution of their individual selves. Modern consumption is accepted, but this acceptance is morally ambivalent. People draw on collective ideological resources to describe and interpret their individual and social selves in order to individually dissociate from what they take to be an immoral society. 
650 |a INDIA MORALITY BARODA GUJRAT 
856 |u http://10.26.1.76/ks/00719.pdf 
942 |c KS 
999 |c 70107  |d 70107 
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