Blue Jeans: The Art of the OrdinaryThis fresh and accessible ethnography offers a new vision of how society might cohere, in the face of on-going global displacement, dislocation, and migration. Drawing from intensive fieldwork in a highly diverse North London neighborhood, Daniel Miller and Sophie Woodward focus on an everyday item—blue jeans—to learn what one simple article of clothing can tell us about our individual and social lives and challenging, by extension, the foundational anthropological presumption of "the normative." Miller and Woodward argue that blue jeans do not always represent social and cultural difference, from gender and wealth, to style and circumstance. Instead they find that jeans allow individuals to inhabit what the authors term "the ordinary." Miller and Woodward demonstrate that the emphasis on becoming ordinary is important for immigrants and the population of North London more generally, and they call into question foundational principles behind anthropology, sociology and philosophy. |
Contents
| 1 | |
Chapter 1 Life | 16 |
Chapter 2 Relationships | 30 |
Chapter 3 Fashion | 46 |
Chapter 4 Comfortable | 65 |
Chapter 5 Ordinary | 84 |
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Common terms and phrases
achieved anthropology argue argument associated become Berg blue jeans body brands casual chavs claims clothing color concept concern consciousness context contrast cultural relativism culture studies Darren designer jeans developed discussion dress ethnography everyday evidence example explicit fashion feel comfortable focus garment gender Global Denim Project GOLDILOCKS PHENOMENON Hema idea ideal identity immigrants indigo individual interviewed issues jeans wearing Jeremy Clarkson kind less Levi's lives London look Marks & Spencer material culture studies means migrants Miller moral mother multiculturalism normative occasions ordinary Oxford pair of jeans parents participants particular people’s person philosophy post-semiotic Primark regard relationship routine Sandywell says seems seen semiotic sense significant simply skinny jeans social science society someone started style of jeans talk teenagers thing tion trousers Ugg boots United Kingdom wardrobe wear blue jeans wear jeans wider Wilk woman women Woodward wore jeans worn