Constructing Identities And Boundaries: Fashion And Clothing Of Working And Middle Class Youth In Contemporary Russia (original) (raw)
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Social classes arise in drawing boundaries, and social identities are defined and asserted through difference (Bourdieu 2010: 167). In this chapter of the book, I consider distinctions within the middle class expressed through concepts and practices, the experience of pleasure, and the disappointments of middle-class consumers in St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk. Concepts and practices along with approval and disapproval of past and current situations regarding consumption show the strategies used by classes and other social groups to construct themselves, secure a social place in the world, and distinguish themselves from other groups. Drawing on in-depth interviews, I will explore the current process of negotiation and renegotiation of age differences, class, gender and sexuality, and capital versus regional distinctions. Drawing on the self and the class concepts of Skeggs (2004), Devine et al. (2005), and others, I will discuss how differences in clothing are produced, how they are articulated in consumers’ accounts, and how they are brought into the daily lives of urban dwellers in the Russian cities of St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk.
Clothing, Identity and the Embodiment of Age
Identity and dress are intimately linked. Clothes display, express and shape identity, imbuing it with a directly material reality. They thus offer a useful lens through which to explore the possibly changing ways in which older identities are constituted in modern culture. In this chapter I will address three sets of questions. First I will ask how writers have understood the relationship between clothing and identity. How has this been have been theorised in sociological, anthropological and dress studies? I will then address how such understandings or analyses relate to, or can be related to, the situations of older people. Is there something different or specific about age? Lastly I will ask whether questions of clothing and dress shed light on established debates concerning the changing nature of ageing in late modern, consumer culture. Clothing not fashion The focus of the chapter is on clothing and dress rather than fashion. By clothing I mean the empirical reality of dressed bodies; and the approaches I draw on derive from sociological and anthropological traditions that regard clothing as a form of material culture, a species of situated body practice, and part of lived experience of people's lives. This focus is important for a group like older people who are not normally encompassed within fashion studies and whose dress is often excluded from its consideration, but who still wear clothes, make choices about them. In this chapter I will largely refer to the situations of older women. This is partly because of the established nature of debates in relation to women, the body and clothing, but it reflects also the
Laboratorium. Журнал социальных исследований, 2011
would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers as well as Mischa Gabowitsch, Anja Utler, and Molly Vellacott for their comments, which contributed considerably to improving the article. 2 I refer to the term "social spectacle" as coined and critically discussed by Guy Debord in The Society of the Spectacle (1995 [1967), which according to the author marks the last stage of the commodification of social life (ibid.:32). "The spectacle cannot be understood either as deliberate distortion of the visual world or as a product of the technology of the mass dissemination of images. It is far better viewed as a weltanschauung that has been actualized, translated into the material realm-a world view transformed into a material realm" (ibid.:12-13). Pfaller (2008) offers a noteworthy critique of this analysis, which will be discussed in the last section of this paper and might shed light on the different approaches toward the "social spectacle" in Russia and the West. 3 Among them were a cleaning woman, a male miner, a female cloakroom attendant, a retired female nurse, a female school teacher, a male and a female artist of different generations, a female university professor, a female philosopher, a male sociologist, a retired female construction engineer, managers of both sexes from the film, tourism, advertising, and banking industries, a young male politician, two young female diplomats (one in Moscow, one in Yekaterinburg), a freelance personal image consultant, a female post-office clerk, a young female music teacher working in various odd jobs such as weaving wreaths for an undertaker, and many others. 4 Field research on the topic of "Getting Dressed as a Social Practice: the Function of Fashion
The chapter “’When I put on a fur coat, everyone knows I am Russian’: Clothing consumption of Russian migrants in Finland” explores the expression of ethnic identity through appearance and personal style. Style and clothing choices, apparently, make Russians a visible community at many levels, demonstrated not only in the media, but also by academic research (Vihalemm, Keller 2011). Scholars describe the fashion style of Russians as an ethnic group as “tasteless because of the use of bright textiles, heavy make-up, and clothing elements in bright colours… The glamorous style is manifested by a variety of elements: expensive brand logos on clothes, glossy fabrics, bright colours, plenty of jewellery, conspicuous make-up, and high heels. Richness of detail is part and parcel of this sub-repertoire” (Vihalemm, Keller 2011: 303). Drawing on in-depth interviews with Russians who live outside the country, particularly in Finland, I will discuss how these Russians express their Russianness through clothing. I rely on the argument that the reproduction of ethnic belonging in consumption goes along with other social distinctions – age, gender, and class. In other words, there are more similarities between people of different ethnicity belonging to the same class and generation than between people of different classes and generations, yet have the same ethnicity. Thus, an ethnic boundary uses other social dimensions to differentiate between the self and others.
The chapter “Fashion and time: The lifespan of clothing” investigates the changes in everyday consumer practices from the point of view of the concept of time. Scholars have called Soviet society a “repair society” (Gerasimova, Chuikina 2009) because not only were things under constant repair in an effort to prolong their lifespans, but so was the whole societal system. Based on differences in the longevity of relationships between humans and things, at least three concepts of clothing consumption may be identified: “permanent,” “fast,” and “sustainable.” I also distinguish a “transitional” fashion. These concepts are rooted in societies with particular economic conditions, levels of technological development, norms, traditions, and customs, as well as consumer practices. I argue that “permanent” consumption was a feature of socialist societies, “transitional” fashion is intrinsic to a period of reforms, “fast fashion” is a dominant characteristic of emerging consumer markets, and “sustainable consumption” is a feature of mature capitalist societies. Based on these concepts, I explore daily practices related to man-thing relations from the point of view of the life cycle of clothing.
The chapter “’We are not rich enough to buy cheap things’: Consumer patterns of the middle class” discusses the formation of a class identity through the consumption of clothing, focusing mostly on the middle class. The formation and expression of identity through appearance and clothing are perceived as important aspects of belonging to the middle class (cf. Liechty 2002: 135). During the Soviet era, conceptions of the body and of middle-class fashion were framed by the notions of being cultured and by Soviet taste; during the 1990s, such concepts were framed by “culturedness” and “civilization” (cf. Patico 2008). These notions continue to inform the understandings of clothing and consumption among today’s middle class in Russia. The middle-class lifestyle is characterized by hedonistic consumption, yet at the same time, the middle class moralizes about the right to enjoy shopping along with such values as virtue and dignity, immanent in the middle class for whom excessive consumption is contradictory. Members of the middle class evaluate a “good life” in qualitative rather than quantitative terms. “Europeanness” is an important concept used to articulate their identity and consumption patterns.
‘Wear your identity’: Styling identities of youth through dress – A conceptual model.
Fashion, Style & Popular Culture, 2020
This article exposes how young people use dress to negotiate, articulate and display identity. A diverse group of young people from Manchester, England, were asked to style themselves using items of clothing, or artefacts, which represented their individual and civic identities. Responses to this styling workshop and the accompanying interviews confirmed the powerful part that dressing can play, as young people navigate different cultural contexts and social environments in their everyday life. The research brings new insights into how dress is used as a catalyst for self-awareness, communication and development of self within multicultural urban settings. It proposes a new model for Dress, Youth and Identity (DYI) that provides a structure onto which young peoples' narratives of dress can be mapped and analysed, building upon the model for Dress and the Public, Private and Secret Self (PPSS) proposed by Eicher and Miller.