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Abstract
The dissertation examines the cultural politics of globalization through an ethnographic study of the role played by the Bombay advertising and marketing industries in the negotiation of mass consumerism in India. In three main sections, it addresses the following specific themes: the rise and elaboration of the universalist social ontology of consumerism in the Indian context; the ambivalent effect of the globalization of markets on the promotion and identity of Indian consumer brands; and the manner in which Indian advertising and marketing professionals assemble and reproduce essentialized representations of Indianness as a strategic device in their dealings with multinational clients. The promotion of ‘aspirational consumption’ as a mode of social participation is of particular importance throughout. Each section of the dissertation is based on a combination of advertising agency-based fieldwork, informant interviews, and archival research. Overall, the dissertation seeks to develop the construct of the ‘commodity image’ as a theoretical and ethnographic tool for a critically engaged anthropology of globalization.
