Commodification, information, value and profit

This paper gives an overview on the processes of commodification and de-commodification of goods and services as a background for analysing developments in the emerging information society. It contributes to the current discussion on intellectual property rights in terms of political economics by connecting it to technology and law. Finally, as an illustration of the proposed view, selected trendsetting Internet-based companies are studied with respect to their strategies in making profit.     

Extending and Broadening Blumer's Conceptualization of Fashion: Adding Notions of Generic Social Process and Semiotic Transformation

Abstract

Herbert Blumer's critics and followers have, for the most part, neglected the significance of his theory of fashion. In this paper I revisit Blumer's thesis on fashion by identifying the fashion process as an instance of the generic social process of semiotic transformation. The concept of semiotic transformation refers to the change in meanings of symbolic objects over time. By identifying six elements of the generic social process of semiotic transformation (systemic permeability, systemic freedom, logonomic fluidity, logonomic openness, indeterminacy, and logonomic hegemony) and by viewing semiotic transformation as a joint act grounded in emergence, I argue that the meaning of change over time is a process structuring both the definition of the situation and symbolic objects. I conclude the paper with a set of reflections on the significance of Blumer's work on fashion for the development of a research agenda of semiotic transformation and for the legacy and reception of Blumerian theory.     

Correlates of Fashion Leadership: Implications for Fashion Process Theory*

This paper suggests possible implications of a study of clothing fashion leadership for current sociological theory in regard to the process of fashion diffusion. Theory of the diffusion of innovations was chosen as the framework for the investigation. Fashion innovativeness and fashion opinion leadership were studied in relation to selected social, psychological, and economic variables. Since the test of collective selection occurs in the local social system it would seem appropriate that theories regarding the operation of the fashion process account more fully for the rate and degree of acceptance and rejection of innovations in the local social system, and for the functions of local participants in the process. Does current sociological theory account for diffusion of new ideas, practices, and products as well as their development and selection?     

Strategy and Structure in the Italian Fashion Industry: A Case of Internationalisation

Many SMEs in the Italian fashion industry do not find a fit between strategy and structure able to open them to growth and new opportunities in emerging international markets. Through an in depth analysis of a successful business case, a contribution is made to the study of strategy–structure fit in the Italian fashion industry, with particular reference to the international growth phase. The case confirms the causal link between strategy and structure. However, the development route in the fashion sector does not follow the historical model analysed by Chandler: Uppsala’s model of incremental and cognitive internationalisation appears to be the more appropriate reference for Italian “industrial networks”, characterised by creative dynamics that are constantly evolving, and strong needs for structural flexibility and strategic change.     

Mustache Fashion Covaries with a Good Marriage Market for Women

It was predicted that men would emphasize sexually-selected traits, including mustaches, beards, and sideburns, when they have difficulty obtaining spouses. Using annual data on British beard fashions extending from 1842–1971, it was found that mustaches, and facial hair in general, are more frequent when there is a good supply of single men of marriageable age. Facial hair fashions, particularly mustaches and beards, were reduced when illegitimacy ratios were high. Regression analyses showed that the relationship between mustache fashion and the marriage market and illegitimacy, respectively, is independent of linear time trend. Results suggest that facial hair is worn to enhance a man's marriage prospects by increasing physical attractiveness and perception of social status. Men shave their mustaches, possibly to convey an impression of trustworthiness, when the marriage market is weak and women might fear sexual exploitation and desertion.     

ON THE LONG-RUN EFFECTS OF FASHION

We investigate the long-run dynamic interaction between fashion (brand loyalty) and industry structure. We analyze how this interaction affects the importance of fashion in the market for a product in the different stages of its life and characterize conditions under which fashion loses or preserves its relevance over time. The model can explain why some products survive fashion changes. ( JEL D21, L0)     

Fashionable Females: Women,Clothes, and Culture in New York

Abstract

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2010 ‘American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity’ exhibition explored the evolution of female fashion from 1890–1940, a period when the role of women in society developed rapidly. This article examines two of the cultural roles that fashion helped to define: the heiress figure of the 1890s, and the 1920s flapper. Both types of fashion identity had a distinctive look, such as the corseted waist and moulded silhouette of the 1890s dresses, and the shorter skirts and dropped waist of the later flapper fashions. Focusing on these two models of womanhood, the article explores the idea of fashion more generally in two novels that discuss these figures: the heiress in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth (1905) and the flapper in Anita Loos’ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925).     

Herbert Blumer and the Study of Fashion: A Reminiscence and A Critique

Recounting my late 1940s graduate student contacts with Herbert Blumer on the topic of fashion, 1 go on to assess his important contribution to the sociological study of fashion. Conceptually rich, the corpus of Blumer's writing on fashion is yet surprisingly small. His major opus on fashion, anticipated only in part by several of his earlier, less exhaustive writings on the subject, did not see print until 1969 with the publication of the justly famous Sociological Quarterly piece “Fashion: From Class Differentiation to Collective Selection.” There Blumer pursues two aims: (1) to challenge the then prevalent functionalist view of fashion as a “trickle down” symbolic mechanism for effecting social class differentiation, a view associated with such sociological eminences as Simmel and Veblen, and (2) to offer in its place his own quite original approach to fashion as a massive “collective selection” process wherein choices are guided more by the elusive lure of modernity than by invidious class tinctions as such. Prominent among the strengths of Blumer's position is the demonstrably greater empirical validity of “collective selection” as compared to “class differentiation.” Among its shortcomings are Blumer's slighting of a salient social psychological theme in Simmers dialectical approach to fashion and, more important, his failure to address in any sustained way the role of the fashion industry in the fashion process. The recently emerging, symbolic interactionist concept of social world offers a means for redressing this omission and for advancing further upon the ground opened by Herbert Blumer's still exciting breakthrough in the sociology of fashion.     

时尚杂志对青年女性美学观的影响

时尚杂志充斥着靓丽的图像、知性的文字和体贴的语气,它们在给读者带来视觉快感的同时,也向读者传达了一种新鲜的美学判断。在时尚杂志所引导的女性美学观中,身体是女性美的中心,而时间美学观和空间美学观是女性美的两个基点,背后隐藏着现代性的追寻、安全感的诉求、消费观念的刺激、男性凝视的快感等美学缘由。时尚杂志潜移默化地向青年女性传达了一种新鲜的美学判断,但其所倡导的美学观是病态的、不健康的,在批判这种美学观的同时,青年女性应该在自我独立的基础上追求一种健康的、朴素的、自然的女性美。     

BURDA FASHIONS - A WISH THAT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE WISHFUL THINKING: HOME-DRESSMAKING IN AUSTRIA 1950-1970

The German fashion magazine Burda epitomized the success of many pattern magazines in the immediate post-war era that aimed at providing information about creating one's own fashion clothes, as well as tips about adapting existing wardrobes. This concept proved highly topical in Austria too, as it offered women almost unlimited possibilities in their search for a new ‘feminine’ identity full of elegance and style after a period of austerity. This essay sketches opposing theoretical approaches towards the popular practice of home-dressmaking among women, linking these approaches to post-war discourse about femininity.     

Effects of work scheduling on time-income tradeoffs

Existing theory and data on work--leisure preferences suggest that how work and free time are scheduled may influence workers' preferences regarding the exchange of income for free time. In general, hours and income are not traded in a strict one-to-one fashion; rather, the value of leisure time is in part a function of the "lumps" in which free time is made available. Exploratory research on an accidental sample of 248 employees in ten work organizations supports this hypothesis. Some societal implications of these findings are discussed.     

Ein theoretisches Modell zur Integration von Arbeitsmigranten in Organisationen

This article in the journal “Gruppe. Organisation. Interaktion. (GIO)” portraits a model of organizational acculturation that describes the emergence of acculturative and socialization stressors upon the encounter of different cultures when migrant workers enter organizations, while taking into account the perspective of persons already employed in those organizations. This model combines approaches of acculturation and socialization research. Intrapersonal (cyclic interplay of information, uncertainty reduction and learning) and interpersonal (voice, participation, empowerment and social support) coping-processes lead to successful adaptation of work migrants. In turn, successful adaptation has positive effects on further work-related outcomes. The model takes account of the fact that due to the additional challenge of having to adapt to a new culture, organizational socialization of work migrants proceeds in a more complex fashion. The model provides starting points for future research and practical applications.     

Creative precarity? Young fashion designers as entrepreneurs in Russia

ABSTRACT

This article explores the careers of young fashion designers as entrepreneurs in Russia. It discusses entrepreneurial experiences and labour practices of fashion designers in the context of precarity: that is, the structural conditions characterized by a lack of social, economic and emotional security caused by a shift of responsibilities for the labour market from the state to the citizens. The article takes the perspective of designers’ agency and answers the question of how young fashion entrepreneurs deal with such structural conditions using state support, community support, organizational practices and emotional management. The article also focuses on creative labour in the broader context of the circumstances of a creative class in an authoritarian state. We argue that in today’s Russia, the discourse on the creative class is perhaps more important than the discourse on precarity, since belonging to the creative class is a source of political identity for fashion designers. The issue of precarity, then, can become a further basis for solidarity and political action. The research draws from 21 in-depth interviews with fashion designers and experts conducted in the cities of Moscow, St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk between 2015 and 2016.     

The Long and Winding Road: Civil Repair of Intimate Injustice

Over the last decade, I have been trying to help fashion a new kind of critical social theory, one that can contribute to the "new theoretical reflection and interpretation of social contestation and political action" (Cohen 1982:xii) that such post-Marxist thinkers as Cohen and Seyla Benhabib (1986) called for two decades ago but that has seemed less and less ascertainable with the passing of time. Outlining a sociological approach to what I call the "civil sphere" of society, I have defined what I would like to think is a new object domain for sociology, one centering on the expansion and contraction of democratic solidarity. Through a series of conceptual elaborations and empirical investigations, I have begun to sketch out core components of this "civil sphere." These cultural and institutional components are fundamentally ambiguous, and they form contradictory relations with the "noncivil" domains that surround the civil sphere.     

Awakening to the desires of older women: Deconstructing ageism within fashion magazines

Older women's body image is multidimensional, changes across lifespan, and is a significant source of self-esteem. Ageist social practices in popular fashion magazines and the reluctance of the fashion industry to recognize the sartorial needs of female baby boomer cohorts feed into an internalization of naturally aging women's bodies as socially undesirable. Depression and/or eating disorders are associated with negative internalizations of body image. Despite baby boomers being the most affluent female social group in the United States history and the fashion industry's enormous social influence on women's self-image, few studies have examined the depiction of older women in fashion magazines. Visual content analysis of eight fashion magazines revealed that the fashion industry continues to focus its promotional efforts on youthful populations and seldom includes images of women over forty, regardless of the large percentage of such women among their readership.     

Displays of Masculinity and Rituals of Display: Congolese Immigration and Xenophobia in Johannesburg

Since the end of apartheid, Johannesburg's city centre has become home to a large number of Congolese men who fled the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Republic of Congo (RC) for socio‐political or economic reasons. Although many may have arrived with hopes to integrate, xenophobia has made that goal near impossible. Rather than accept acts of marginalisation, however, many of these men have responded with boasts that Congolese culture is not only equal to that of South Africa—it is better. At the root of this argument is Congolese soukous music (specifically soukous appreciation songs) and fashion (specifically Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Elégantes, a Congolese fashion movement known by its acronym la SAPE), which, according to one young Brazzaville man, “show everyone in South Africa that the Congolese are number one” (Interview 2010). This article introduces soukous and la SAPE through notions of masculinity and display, which collectively enable these Congolese men in Johannesburg to reverse the hierarchies of inferiority imposed by xenophobia; and empowers them with opportunities for new imaginaries and practices of belonging. The research for this study was carried out in Johannesburg between 2010 and 2016.     

Blood,Sweat, and Tears: Navigating Creepy versus Cool in Wearable Biotech

ABSTRACT

This paper considers how personal data protections figure into the design process of wearable technology. The data question is becoming especially important in the face of recent innovations in biotechnology that capitalize on the new fungibility of biology and electronics, in which new biotech wearables capitalize on the ability to analyze and track changes in blood, sweat, and tears. Interviews and participant observation with wearable tech designers, data scientists, fashion tech entrepreneurs, and select experts in cybersecurity and intellectual property law, reveal a range of approaches to data protection in design within the culture where wearables are beginning to merge with biotech. While a few respondents were extremely vigilant about protecting consumer’s privacy, the majority felt that when consumers ‘opt in’ to data sharing, they should be cognizant of the risks. From their perspective, it is not necessarily the producer’s responsibility to protect user's personal data. These attitudes present a problematic logic, which leaves users vulnerable to data exploitation. The paper concludes by arguing that this laissez-faire culture is the environment in which wearable biotech is being developed and will be deployed. This emerging technology raises issues about bodies, data, and ownership in crucial need of analysis and critique to push its move into the mainstream toward more equitable and inclusive ends.     

Shared Reality and Grounded Feelings During Courtship: Do They Matter for Marital Success?

This study provides evidence that newlywed pairs who have a shared and well‐grounded understanding of their courtship are better able to establish unions that endure. Using a sample of 168 couples, the authors found that marriages were more likely to survive when courting partners (a) loved each other to a similar degree, (b) depicted the probability of marriage and changes in the likelihood of marriage in a corresponding fashion over the course of their courtship, and (c) portrayed the courtship as escalating from a low (25%) to a high (75%) probability of marriage as spanning a comparable period of time. The durability of marriages was reflected, as well, in how solidly courting partners' feelings for each other were interwoven with their courtship experiences. More specifically, courtship difficulties were not as associated with weakened feelings of love or with heightened feelings of ambivalence among couples who later divorced as compared to those who stayed married.     

CASH INFLOWS AND BUBBLES IN ASSET MARKETS WITH CONSTANT FUNDAMENTAL VALUES

Previous experimental research on asset markets has reported that the level of cash available to traders does not affect asset prices when fundamentals follow a time trajectory that is constant over time. This contrasts with other research indicating that greater cash levels increase prices when fundamental values are decreasing over time. We report a new experiment in which we show that greater initial cash levels are indeed associated with higher prices when fundamental values are constant over time. Thus, high cash levels will lead to bubbles, if the cash is introduced before the market opens. Our results reconcile the two previous sets of findings. (JEL C90, D03, G02, G12)