Fashioning the nation in the age of populism

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2181985
AutoresMolnar (0000-0003-1156-9238, New School, autor de correspondencia), Virág Molnár
Año2025
Volumen18
Número1
Páginas68-91
Fecha de publicación2025-01-02
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Cultural Economy (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1753-0350 • E-ISSN: 1753-0369
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17530350.2024.2373158
OpenAlexW4404082247
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas59

Dress and fashion are both an important site and an idiom through which political conflicts, over cultural membership, such as national and ethnic belonging, are played out. In this article, I use Hungary as a case study to map the various ways in which fashion is used today in populist regimes to delineate the symbolic boundaries of the nation by generating powerful material and visual definitions of belonging, identity, sovereignty, community, traditional craftsmanship and shared heritage. I draw on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews I conducted in Hungary between 2017 and 2022 with the owners and designers of independent fashion labels that each stress the importance of incorporating ‘traditional’ Hungarian motifs into contemporary everyday wear. I show how these cultural producers normalize radical nationalism and imagine the nation through consumer communities, highlighting the significance of symbolic economies for populist rule. My analysis develops a relational and practice-oriented approach to consumer nationalism, expanding scholarship on the everyday mechanisms through which the national extends into the economic realm

Political economy · Political science · Politics · Populism · Sociology · Asian Culture and Media Studies · Fashion and Cultural Textiles · Gender Studies · Law · Media, Gender, and Advertising