CONSUMING CLASS: Multilevel Marketers in Neoliberal Mexico
Since the 1980s, Mexican leaders have followed other Latin American countries in pursuing neoliberal economic policies designed to stimulate foreign investment, reduce public spending, and promote free trade. Recent studies of indigenous movements and popular protests challenge the idea that these market-based economic reforms enjoy a broad consensus and suggest that elites impose them by force. By turning the focus to middle-class Mexicans, I argue that some nonelite sectors of society avidly welcome the reign of the free market. Although they do not profit directly from unregulated capitalism, the middle class looks to neoliberalism to ensure access to the material markers of class status. The rising popularity of multilevel marketing companies in Mexico, which glorify consumption and celebrate the possibilities of entrepreneurship, demonstrates the appeal of neoliberalism to citizens fearful of diminished purchasing power. By tying consumption to globalized free markets, neoliberalism does not need coercion to win acceptance.
PESTICIDES IN COCA‐COLA AND PEPSI: Consumerism, Brand Image, and Public Interest in a Globalizing India
In India, and elsewhere, the effects of globalization, especially increased consumerism, in expanding the circulation of branded goods, has produced a complex mix of responses and readings that are often contradictory. In striving to make sense of the apparently autonomous and often-dizzying pace of economic and cultural change, media and other discourses utilize narratives and strategies that, although located in symbolic–political fields, remain contingent in their specific configurations. Coca-Cola and Pepsi as brands are hybrid embodiments of the larger dissonances constitutive of the present moment in Indian modernity. On the basis of an analysis primarily of media commentary about a recent environmental campaign to highlight the presence of pesticides in Coca-Cola and Pepsi products, this article charts out the recurring discursive motifs that illustrate the political potential and limitations of the evolving sociopolitical fields, encompassing such contested categories as the state, multinational corporations, and the consumer, and their interrelationships in a globalizing India.
Nonobstetric lower genital tract injuries in rural India
To study the impact of nonobstetric genital tract injury (NOGTI) in rural India.