Why do the Indians Wear Adidas? Or, Culture Contact and the Relations of Consumption

Abstract

The study of the consumption of goods has never achieved the prominence in anthropology of either production or exchange. Yet the accelerating consumption of western goods in non-western societies is one of the most obtrusive cultural and economic trends of the last three centuries. This article addresses the general issue of why goods flow between cultural groups by re-examining the concept of consumption. It raises questions of importance to studies of development, material culture, ethnohistory, and symbolic anthropology.

Collective economic actors

“…In the commodity-as-culture approach, in contrast, the question is what forces drive the movement of the commoditised culture, and a critical force appears to be people's interest in the culture that the commodity carries: in the language of economic theory, demand. It is that interest that requires detailed anthropological investigation (see Wilk and Arnould 2016), since the culture carried by the commodity ultimately articulates with the broader culture in which the commodity circulates.…”

“…However, companies also made sure to introduce differences in the copy so that the corporation-specific characteristics of the commodity could be readily detected. The interest of consumers in some commodities as opposed to others, including the affective charge those commodities seem to have, may also be linked to the similarities and differences mapped out by the field of inter-corporate relations as it evolves over time, thereby beginning to address the kinds of questions raised by Richard Wilk and Eric Arnould (2016) about diffusion and demand.…”