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From Transience to Immanence: Consumption, Life-Cycle and Social Mobility in Kerala, South India

In this paper, we explore some ways through which the adoption of specirc consumption practices enables members of a South-Indian ex-untouchable community, Izhavas within Kerala, to objectify and rederne their self-perceived and other-perceived social position, and to concretize and make sense of th...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: FILIPPO OSELLA and CAROLINE OSELLA
Format: Printed Book
Published: Modern Asian Studies 33, 4 (1999), pp. 989�1020. 1999
Online Access:http://10.26.1.76/ks/001214.pdf
LEADER 016980000a22001330004500
100 |a FILIPPO OSELLA and CAROLINE OSELLA 
245 |a From Transience to Immanence: Consumption, Life-Cycle and Social Mobility in Kerala, South India 
260 |c 1999 
260 |b Modern Asian Studies 33, 4 (1999), pp. 989�1020. 
520 |a In this paper, we explore some ways through which the adoption of specirc consumption practices enables members of a South-Indian ex-untouchable community, Izhavas within Kerala, to objectify and rederne their self-perceived and other-perceived social position, and to concretize and make sense of their attempts to achieve generalized upward mobility. Located within individual, familial and group mobility strategies and developmental cycles, consumption assumes a long-term dimension, oriented towards present and future. Consumption practices also take on a normative aspect: youthful orientations towards transience and ephemerality should be replaced by a mature demeanour directed towards duration and permanency, and achievement of householder status. `Householders' negotiate their paths through a complex consumer culture where values of transience and durability articulate with a local/foreign continuum. The labouring poor, whose consumption is severely limited, remain unable, in the eyes of the majority, to attain mature householder status. While Dalit castes withdraw into virtuosity in arenas such as fashion, labouring Izhavas struggle unsuccessfully to maintain distinction and join the mainstream. 
856 |u http://10.26.1.76/ks/001214.pdf 
942 |c KS 
999 |c 70602  |d 70602 
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