Cultural Commodification & Film Costume
Ajmera Mohan Singh: Assistant Professor Centre for Art Direction & Set Design Skills & Centre for Textiles & Fashion Skills. Arjun Appadurai (1988) in his edited book, The social life of things: Commodities in cultural perspective. In his introductory essay in the first chapter "Commodities and the Politics of Value", starts by defining commodities provisionally as objects of economic value. He says that commodities would be of interest to anyone studying cultures such as the cultural anthropologist who is interested in the “material culture” of societies . An essay in the second chapter by Igor Kopytoff, explains "For the economist, commodities simply are. That is, certain things and rights to things are produced, exist, and can be seen to circulate through the economic system as they are being exchanged for other things, usually in exchange for money." He expands on the argument that “from cultural perspective, the production of commodities is a...