Rohit Varman

Nationalism and Ideology in an Anticonsumption Movement

In this research we examine the role of the nationalist ideology of swadeshi in a contemporary anticonsumption movement and show that its deployment is linked to the experiences of colonialism, modernity, and globalization in India. Specifically, we offer a postcolonial understanding of reflexivity and nationalism in an anticonsumption movement opposing Coca-Cola in India. This helps us offer an interpretation of this consumer movement involving spatial politics, temporal heterogeneity, appropriation of existing ideology, the use of consumption in ideology, and attempts to bring together a disparate set of actors in the movement.

Conflicts at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Profitability, Poverty Alleviation, and Neoliberal Governmentality

This article adopts the concept of neoliberal governmentality to critically analyze public policy failures in a bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) marketing initiative. This research shows that e-Choupal, an Indian BOP initiative, is hampered by a divide between poverty alleviation and profit seeking, which is inadequately reconciled by the neoliberal government policies that dominate contemporary India. The initiative sounds good, even noble, but becomes mired in divergent discourses and practices that ultimately fail to help the poor whom it targets. This research helps explicate the problems with BOP policy interventions that encourage profit seeking as a way to alleviate poverty.

Consuming postcolonial shopping malls

Abstract Through a naturalistic inquiry, we interpret shopping malls in India as post-colonial sites in which young consumers deploy the West in an attempt to transform their Third World identities. Shopping malls in former colonies represent a post-colonial hybridity that offers consumers the illusion of being Western, modern, and developed. Moreover, consumption of post-colonial retail arenas is characterised as a masquerade through which young consumers attempt to disguise or temporarily transcend their Third World realities. This interpretation helps us to offer insights into transitioning retail servicescapes of the Third World, which in turn helps to improve extant understanding of consumer identity and global consumer culture.

Disciplining the discipline: understanding postcolonial epistemic ideology in marketing

In this study, conducted in two top ranked business schools in India, we examine pedagogy and doctoral research in marketing and show that the discipline is characterised by dependency on the West. We offer an understanding of postcolonial epistemic ideology that is contributing to the creation of unreflexive and dependent subjectivities in the discipline. We show that the marketing discourse in postcoloniality is characterised by mimesis of the West and silencing of local subaltern stakeholders. We further show that epistemic ideology disciplines through the deployment of devices developed in the West to create a compradorian theatre.

Weaving a web: subaltern consumers, rising consumer culture, and television

Cultivation analysis suggests that television influences local cultures through its complex repertoire of images and narratives, which constitute a representation. Through a discursive analysis of television content in India we contend that rising material aspirations and consumer culture are significantly influenced by this medium. Dialectics of turmoil and tranquility mark this development for the working class population. On the one hand, there is domestication of unrest among subaltern groups, as they withdraw from collective political struggles to narrower and more tranquil forms of emulation and economism. On the other hand, these attempts at emulation have resulted in the poorer sections of society devoting their limited resources to aping a lifestyle well beyond their reach and further compromising their quality of life. The other pole of the dialectic is the increase in turmoil that results from tearing the traditional social fabric and support systems. This turmoil progressively manifests itself in increasing materialism and greater monetization of relationships for these subaltern groups.

Freedom and Consumption: Toward Conceptualizing Systemic Constraints for Subaltern Consumers in a Capitalist Society

Extant postmodern theorization celebrates a close relationship between freedom and consumption. Some theorists have argued that in this period of late capitalism, consumption has become an independent sphere and compensates for freedom lost in the domain of production. Challenging this interpretation and demonstrating a close association between the spheres of production and consumption for subaltern consumers, we illustrate that consumer freedom continues to be an elitist privilege. Furthermore, with the concepts of negative and positive freedom we draw attention towards the systemic dimensions of capitalism in order to understand the state of unfreedom for subaltern consumers.

Rising Markets and Failing Health: An Inquiry into Subaltern Health Care Consumption under Neoliberalism

This research highlights some of the fundamental weaknesses in the market-based economic approach for a developing society. This study of health care consumption by subaltern groups in India reveals that consumers believe that greater reliance on a market-based system has contributed to a decline in the state health institutions, proliferation of private clinics, and a close physician—pharmaceutical firm nexus. Accordingly, instead of creating a more efficient system of health care delivery, market forces are instrumental in marginalization of the subaltern sections of the population. Ramifications of these findings include a suggested expansion in quality of life marketing framework to include the concept of consumer empowerment with specific emphases on dimensions of control and exclusion.

Market subjectivity and neoliberal governmentality in higher education

Abstract Using an interpretive case study in a business school in India, this research examines student behaviour and offers an understanding of a marketisation process in higher education. The study deploys Foucaults conceptualisation of governmentality and uncovers processes through which market subjectivity is fostered among students as they strive to become responsible, active, and entrepreneurial subjects. The subject position is attributed to several governmental discourses of peer pressure, abnormality, uncritical pedagogy, loan repayment, and elitism that prevail in the business school. The study further highlights the roles of English language and preference for western corporations which are unique to postcolonial India. Market subjectivity results in the prevalence of instrumental rationality, failure to develop a critical academic perspective, subordination of social concerns, and disenchantment and exclusion among some students.

Underdeveloped Other in country-of-origin theory and practices

Consumers and marketers employ extant sociocultural discourses to give meaning to the products they consume or sell. In this paper, we present data and analyses that illustrate the manner by which American consumers and marketers draw upon one such sociocultural discourse, development, in the context of “craft” objects. Beyond the focus on discourse, however, our intent is to apply a post-development perspective to the Otherness inherent in country-of-origin (COO) theory and practices. We critique the COO framework and see it as a ramification of, and further creator of, economic difference and hierarchy.

Accumulation through derealization: How corporate violence remains unchecked

This study examines the alleged organization of violence by Coca-Cola through a field study conducted in a village in India. It draws on the works of Judith Butler to show how subaltern groups are derealized and made into ungrievable lives through specific, yet recurrent, practices that keep violence unchecked. Many participants attempt to resist derealization through protest activities that showcase their vulnerability. However, the firm appropriates their claims to vulnerability through a paternalistic discourse that justifies intensified violence and derealization. This research offers insights into accumulation through derealization and on the effects of resistance to it.