Acting Out Class

Abstract

This research report, based on a fieldwork in Lucknow, North India, is an inquiry into the lives of young urban men and their concerns with status and class. The report approaches the topics of status and class through a focus on consumption, mimicking and mocking of ideas, commodities, mediated celebrities and lifestyles. By following five urban men and the processes of creation and re-creation of their self-definitions, it points to the ways in which they continually negotiate and renegotiate their status through simultaneous consumption and rejection of both tangible and intangible objects and ideas and through relating to and talking about their families. The case studies of these urban men reveal how they position themselves in opposition and in relation to each other and to mass-mediated celebrity lifestyles and fashions. The report touches on the topics of simultaneous mimicking and mocking of the imagined ‘West’ and the imagined ‘ancient and traditional’ vs. ‘modern’ India, and the ways in which ‘classness’ is acted out in relation to these ideas. 
 
 Keywords: Indian male, class, mimesis, imitation, consumption, fashion, modernity, celebrity, media