This study examines how Bourdieu's conceptualisation of distinction manifests itself in the promotion of fashion products that are regarded as 'ethical', 'sustainable' and 'authentic'. According to Bourdieu (1984:231), the producers who are guided by the logic of competition with other producers and by the specific interests associated with their position in the field of production, produce distinct products to meet different cultural interests that the consumers attribute to their class conditions and positions. Situated within an industry stylising itself as globally connected yet locally engaged, my research investigates how the concept of 'sustainable fashion' is constructed and circulated linguistically in Shanghai's high-end market, and how added value is discursively created around their products for specific social groups. In particular, the focus is on Shanghai, one of the most affluent cities in China that is exemplary of changing consumption patterns among a growing middle- and upper class who are geared towards consuming sustainable fashion products. Research has shown that the language used within the commodity chain process is not only limited to its descriptive function for the production, circulation, or exchange of products but can also be considered an important constitutive part of the entire process (e.g. Heller et al. 2014; Lorente, 2012; Shankar and Cavanaugh, 2012). Under this argument, this study highlights the significance of language in creating taste distinction and hope to contribute to scholarly discussions on the role of language within political economies.
The data under analysis consists of field notes, interview transcripts, texts collected from the field (e.g. promotional pamphlets, posters, exhibition boards) and social media posts of stakeholders within the fashion industry in Shanghai. The mix-methods approach was adopted to achieve methodological triangulation. Specifically, the ethnographic part of the research, comprised of participant observations and semi-structured interviews, aims to investigate the underlying relations of stakeholders and draw up a chain of commodities that links think tanks, recycling initiatives, garment traders, production cooperatives and fashion brands who are all engaged in the valuation of sustainable clothing; the corpus-analytical part, informed by ethnography, examines stakeholders' Weibo (a popular social media website in China)posts to explore how social media contribute to the discursive creation of value and to self-representation. It is argued that the added value of high-end sustainable fashion products is discursively constructed through taste distinction, which helps the stakeholders establish a niche market in Shanghai by differentiating themselves from other businesses within the fashion industry that rely on the industrial-, exploitative- and delocalised forms of production.
References
Bourdieu, P., 1984. Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Heller, M., Pujolar, J. and Duchêne, A., 2014. Linguistic Commodification in Tourism. Journal of Sociolinguist, 18 (4), 539–566.
Lorente, B. P., 2012. The Making of "Workers of the World": Language and the Labour Brokerage state. In: Duchêne, A., Heller, M. (Eds.), Language in Late Capitalism: Pride and Profit. New York: Routledge, 183–206.
Shankar, S. and Cavanaugh, J. R., 2012. Language Materiality in Global Capitalism. Annual Review of Anthropology, 41, 355–369.
