I just finished reading Patrik Aspers’ Orderly Fashion (disclosure: I was given a review copy of the book by Princeton University Press), which analyzes the global fashion industry from a sociological point of view. Aspers begins by observing the relatively high amount of order among branded garment retailers (e.g. H&M) and their consumer base. He problematizes this ordered relationship, and ultimately situates the order in the context of social identities. Now, it’s not a huge leap to realize that the perceived value of fashion is socially constructed and socially entrenched. However, Aspers manages to zoom out to the industry as a whole to confront these dynamics at a deeper level.
Aspers argues that markets can either be ordered by status or by standard. Status ordering occurs in the consumption end, as the reflexive identities of both the retailers and the consumers interact. These identities are termed reflexive because they are concerned with internal desire, and can have dimensions ranging from the superficial (sheer looks) to the ethical (labor conditions). Under status ordering, the commodities exchanged derive meaning from “the interaction between the commodity and its wearers.” The status of both the consumer and the retailer is relevant.
Under standard ordering, more objective measures of quality and price are relevant. These play into status in the consumer market, but are most important on the production end, where a complex process leads to relationships between the retailers and the garment factories. Aspers doesn’t dig too deep into the distinctly capitalist production conditions, but accepts them as a given, and tries to explain how the wide range of producers and working conditions come to exist in relation with the retailers.
Aspers argues that the partial order within this production market interacts with the partial order in the consumption market, which both interact with the broader order in the capitalist market as a whole. However, he doesn’t delve too deep into this superstructure, and takes it as a given. Nor does he delve into the extent to which the fashion industry tends to reinforce the class and consumption structures within capitalism. What we have here, then, is a case study. Although superficial at times, I think it points economic sociology research in a useful direction by acknowledging micro-level social embeddedness as a starting point. Ultimately, though, this type of research will be more useful as it zooms out to the capitalist superstructure, and imagines alternative arrangements of consumption and production. I do hope that economists read this book and realize the potential that such descriptive analysis holds.
I think the notion of “status markets” being ordered by status is very interesting, and especially remembering that both the status of the consumer AND the retailer is relevant.
On a related note, do you think these “status markets” could be a case of when we find upward sloping demand curves? Part of the appeal of fashion items might be the high price, and it seems that if the same garments are sold too cheaply, the people will not buy them because they think something is wrong with it or it will not fill their desire for status. So the exact same items might sell faster at a higher price, throwing a wrench in to one of the most basic neoclassical assumptions about how markets work.
Eh, I think neoclassical economics can deal with upward sloping demand curves in commodity markets, just not labor markets- remember Giffin goods?
Just don’t f with those labor market curves.
This is status markets and the status also interesting.