Rohit Varman
Biographic Data
| ID | 104820 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rohit Varman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rohit |
| FAMILY NAME | Varman |
| SIGNATURE | VARMAN R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Deakin University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7585-6589 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 118 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
The Routledge Companion to Critical Marketing
Theorizing necroptics: Invisibilization of violence and death-worlds
This paper examines the invisibilization of violence and deaths in India’s leading daily during the 1918 influenza pandemic, the Times of India. The pandemic killed more than 14 million Indians in a short span of time. Studying this historical event and the way it was reported in an influential newspaper, this research shows how media representations not only invisibilized the alarming levels of mortality, but also elided the efforts of colonial …
Post-Colonial Consumer Respect and the Framing of Neocolonial Consumption in Advertising
This study of the production, representation, and reception of post-colonial advertising in India reveals a politics of consumer respectability. The post-colonial politics of consumer respectability is located at the intersection of center-periphery relations, class divisions, and colorism in a way that it frames neocolonial consumption. Advertisers depict middle-class consumer respectability by asserting Indian nationalism and by degrading the W…
Decolonizing marketing
In January 2021, the ETHOS Research Center at Bayes Business School, along with the CRIS Research Center at Royal Holloway University of London, hosted an event entitled Decolonizing the Business School. Over 500 attendees participated, from all business disciplines, testifying to the strong levels of interest in this topic. Marketing was particularly active, with over 100 participants. In this article, I (Giana Eckhardt, one of the organizers of…
Money, Sacrificial Work, and Poor Consumers
This is an ethnography among poor migrants from Kerala, India to the Middle East. This study offers insights into how the poor accumulate sacrificial money through sufferings and self-abnegation, and earmark it for consumption in Kerala. The hardships endured to earn the sacrificial money transform it into a sacred object. The phenomena of accumulation, earmarking, and meaning making of sacrificial money by the poor can be understood through the …
Normative Violence in Domestic Service: A Study of Exploitation, Status, and Grievability
This paper contributes to business ethics by focusing on consumption that is characterized by normative violence. By drawing on the work of Judith Butler this study of kajer lok —a female subaltern group of Indian domestic service providers—and their higher status clients shows how codes of status-based consumption shaped by markets, class, caste, and patriarchy create a social order that reduces kajer lok to “ungreivable” lives. Our study contri…
The Regeneration of Consumer Movement Solidarity
Consumer research has focused on the various resources and tactics that help movements achieve a range of institutional and marketplace changes. Yet, little attention has been paid to the persistence of movement solidarity, in particular its regeneration, despite a range of threats to it. Our research unpacks mechanisms that help consumer movement solidarity to overcome threats. Drawing on a 6-year ethnographic study of consumer movements in Exar…
The Development of Political Consumerism in India: A Historical Perspective
This chapter provides a historical view of the development of political consumerism in India and details its present-day manifestations. Political consumerism in India emerged during the colonial period and was rooted in Gandhian ideologies such as swadeshi . The chapter highlights how swadeshi has been co-opted by political and business interests, which have recast it as a form of ascendant economic nationalism. Strategies such as boycotting hav…
Alternative Organisations in India: Undoing Boundaries
This book studies accounts of alternative organisations in India and provides critical insights on if and why alternative organisations matter to management theory and practice, how management theory can be applied to the context of alternative organisations, and how, from an alternate organisational perspective, existing debates in management can be enriched. Some other questions examined in this book are: what are spaces of organising outside c…
Dispossessing vulnerable consumers: Derealization, desubjectification, and violence
This article draws upon the work of Judith Butler to explain how violence is deployed against vulnerable consumers. It examines a site in which a commercial complex including a shopping mall is to be constructed in Ejipura, Bangalore (India), by displacing the poor from their slums. It offers insights into the mechanisms of violent dispossession that inhere liberal modes of governance of consumers. Moreover, this study attends to derealization th…
Curry
Marketplace icons are often markers of transnational transactions engendered by commercialization and dominance of the West. Curry as a marketplace icon helps to identify these constituents of iconicity. This article briefly examines the historical roots of curry or spicy Indian food and its implication in the project of colonialism. Curry as a signifier of Indian food was invented in British colonial narratives and shaped by commercial interests…
Accumulation through derealization: How corporate violence remains unchecked
This study examines the alleged organization of violence by Coca-Cola through a field study conducted in a village in India. It draws on the works of Judith Butler to show how subaltern groups are derealized and made into ungrievable lives through specific, yet recurrent, practices that keep violence unchecked. Many participants attempt to resist derealization through protest activities that showcase their vulnerability. However, the firm appropr…
Unsettling India: Affect, Temporality, Transnationality
In the last 20 years, India has witnessed visible, and often acrimonious, contests between global and local, modernity and tradition, markets and the State. The economic domain has seen a shift fro
Status, Caste, and Market in a Changing Indian Village
When social and economic conditions change dramatically, status hierarchies in place for hundreds of years can crumble as marketization destabilizes once rigid boundaries. This study examines such changes in symbolic power through an ethnographic study of a village in North India. Marketization and accompanying privatization do not create an independent sphere where only money matters, but due to a mix of new socioeconomic motives, they produce n…
Underdeveloped Other in country-of-origin theory and practices
Consumers and marketers employ extant sociocultural discourses to give meaning to the products they consume or sell. In this paper, we present data and analyses that illustrate the manner by which American consumers and marketers draw upon one such sociocultural discourse, development, in the context of “craft” objects. Beyond the focus on discourse, however, our intent is to apply a post-development perspective to the Otherness inherent in count…
Nationalism and Ideology in an Anticonsumption Movement
In this research we examine the role of the nationalist ideology of swadeshi in a contemporary anticonsumption movement and show that its deployment is linked to the experiences of colonialism, modernity, and globalization in India. Specifically, we offer a postcolonial understanding of reflexivity and nationalism in an anticonsumption movement opposing Coca-Cola in India. This helps us offer an interpretation of this consumer movement involving …
The Political Economy of Markets and Development: A Case Study of Health Care Consumption in the State of Kerala, India
Marketing theory has largely ignored the issue of power in influencing exchanges. Most of the studies either disregard the role of power, or resource power is the only dimension taken into account. In this study, we expand the existing understanding by centrally situating the role of socio-political power in the consumption process. We examine the health care system in the Indian state of Kerala and highlight that socio-political power is a cruci…
Erasing Futures: Ethics of Marketing an Intoxicant to Homeless Children
This research draws upon the classical frameworks of consequentialism and Kantian ethics to address the problem of business ethics examined in this study. Critically unraveling the linkages between consequentialism and neoliberalism, we support the Kantian framework for addressing the ethical lacuna presented in this research. In examining consumption of correcting fluid as a stimulant by homeless children, we argue that the profit imperative gui…
Freedom and Consumption: Toward Conceptualizing Systemic Constraints for Subaltern Consumers in a Capitalist Society
Extant postmodern theorization celebrates a close relationship between freedom and consumption. Some theorists have argued that in this period of late capitalism, consumption has become an independent sphere and compensates for freedom lost in the domain of production. Challenging this interpretation and demonstrating a close association between the spheres of production and consumption for subaltern consumers, we illustrate that consumer freedom…
Nationalism and Ideology in an Anticonsumption Movement
In this research we examine the role of the nationalist ideology of swadeshi in a contemporary anticonsumption movement and show that its deployment is linked to the experiences of colonialism, modernity, and globalization in India. Specifically, we offer a postcolonial understanding of reflexivity and nationalism in an anticonsumption movement opposing Coca-Cola in India. This helps us offer an interpretation of this consumer movement involving …
Status, Caste, and Market in a Changing Indian Village
When social and economic conditions change dramatically, status hierarchies in place for hundreds of years can crumble as marketization destabilizes once rigid boundaries. This study examines such changes in symbolic power through an ethnographic study of a village in North India. Marketization and accompanying privatization do not create an independent sphere where only money matters, but due to a mix of new socioeconomic motives, they produce n…
Accumulation through derealization: How corporate violence remains unchecked
This study examines the alleged organization of violence by Coca-Cola through a field study conducted in a village in India. It draws on the works of Judith Butler to show how subaltern groups are derealized and made into ungrievable lives through specific, yet recurrent, practices that keep violence unchecked. Many participants attempt to resist derealization through protest activities that showcase their vulnerability. However, the firm appropr…
Freedom and Consumption: Toward Conceptualizing Systemic Constraints for Subaltern Consumers in a Capitalist Society
Extant postmodern theorization celebrates a close relationship between freedom and consumption. Some theorists have argued that in this period of late capitalism, consumption has become an independent sphere and compensates for freedom lost in the domain of production. Challenging this interpretation and demonstrating a close association between the spheres of production and consumption for subaltern consumers, we illustrate that consumer freedom…
Underdeveloped Other in country-of-origin theory and practices
Consumers and marketers employ extant sociocultural discourses to give meaning to the products they consume or sell. In this paper, we present data and analyses that illustrate the manner by which American consumers and marketers draw upon one such sociocultural discourse, development, in the context of “craft” objects. Beyond the focus on discourse, however, our intent is to apply a post-development perspective to the Otherness inherent in count…
The Regeneration of Consumer Movement Solidarity
Consumer research has focused on the various resources and tactics that help movements achieve a range of institutional and marketplace changes. Yet, little attention has been paid to the persistence of movement solidarity, in particular its regeneration, despite a range of threats to it. Our research unpacks mechanisms that help consumer movement solidarity to overcome threats. Drawing on a 6-year ethnographic study of consumer movements in Exar…
Curry
Marketplace icons are often markers of transnational transactions engendered by commercialization and dominance of the West. Curry as a marketplace icon helps to identify these constituents of iconicity. This article briefly examines the historical roots of curry or spicy Indian food and its implication in the project of colonialism. Curry as a signifier of Indian food was invented in British colonial narratives and shaped by commercial interests…
Post-Colonial Consumer Respect and the Framing of Neocolonial Consumption in Advertising
This study of the production, representation, and reception of post-colonial advertising in India reveals a politics of consumer respectability. The post-colonial politics of consumer respectability is located at the intersection of center-periphery relations, class divisions, and colorism in a way that it frames neocolonial consumption. Advertisers depict middle-class consumer respectability by asserting Indian nationalism and by degrading the W…
Money, Sacrificial Work, and Poor Consumers
This is an ethnography among poor migrants from Kerala, India to the Middle East. This study offers insights into how the poor accumulate sacrificial money through sufferings and self-abnegation, and earmark it for consumption in Kerala. The hardships endured to earn the sacrificial money transform it into a sacred object. The phenomena of accumulation, earmarking, and meaning making of sacrificial money by the poor can be understood through the …
Unsettling India: Affect, Temporality, Transnationality
In the last 20 years, India has witnessed visible, and often acrimonious, contests between global and local, modernity and tradition, markets and the State. The economic domain has seen a shift fro
The Political Economy of Markets and Development: A Case Study of Health Care Consumption in the State of Kerala, India
Marketing theory has largely ignored the issue of power in influencing exchanges. Most of the studies either disregard the role of power, or resource power is the only dimension taken into account. In this study, we expand the existing understanding by centrally situating the role of socio-political power in the consumption process. We examine the health care system in the Indian state of Kerala and highlight that socio-political power is a cruci…
Erasing Futures: Ethics of Marketing an Intoxicant to Homeless Children
This research draws upon the classical frameworks of consequentialism and Kantian ethics to address the problem of business ethics examined in this study. Critically unraveling the linkages between consequentialism and neoliberalism, we support the Kantian framework for addressing the ethical lacuna presented in this research. In examining consumption of correcting fluid as a stimulant by homeless children, we argue that the profit imperative gui…
Erasing Futures: Ethics of Marketing an Intoxicant to Homeless Children
This research draws upon the classical frameworks of consequentialism and Kantian ethics to address the problem of business ethics examined in this study. Critically unraveling the linkages between consequentialism and neoliberalism, we support the Kantian framework for addressing the ethical lacuna presented in this research. In examining consumption of correcting fluid as a stimulant by homeless children, we argue that the profit imperative gui…
Freedom and Consumption: Toward Conceptualizing Systemic Constraints for Subaltern Consumers in a Capitalist Society
Extant postmodern theorization celebrates a close relationship between freedom and consumption. Some theorists have argued that in this period of late capitalism, consumption has become an independent sphere and compensates for freedom lost in the domain of production. Challenging this interpretation and demonstrating a close association between the spheres of production and consumption for subaltern consumers, we illustrate that consumer freedom…
The Political Economy of Markets and Development: A Case Study of Health Care Consumption in the State of Kerala, India
Marketing theory has largely ignored the issue of power in influencing exchanges. Most of the studies either disregard the role of power, or resource power is the only dimension taken into account. In this study, we expand the existing understanding by centrally situating the role of socio-political power in the consumption process. We examine the health care system in the Indian state of Kerala and highlight that socio-political power is a cruci…
Nationalism and Ideology in an Anticonsumption Movement
In this research we examine the role of the nationalist ideology of swadeshi in a contemporary anticonsumption movement and show that its deployment is linked to the experiences of colonialism, modernity, and globalization in India. Specifically, we offer a postcolonial understanding of reflexivity and nationalism in an anticonsumption movement opposing Coca-Cola in India. This helps us offer an interpretation of this consumer movement involving …
Underdeveloped Other in country-of-origin theory and practices
Consumers and marketers employ extant sociocultural discourses to give meaning to the products they consume or sell. In this paper, we present data and analyses that illustrate the manner by which American consumers and marketers draw upon one such sociocultural discourse, development, in the context of “craft” objects. Beyond the focus on discourse, however, our intent is to apply a post-development perspective to the Otherness inherent in count…
Status, Caste, and Market in a Changing Indian Village
When social and economic conditions change dramatically, status hierarchies in place for hundreds of years can crumble as marketization destabilizes once rigid boundaries. This study examines such changes in symbolic power through an ethnographic study of a village in North India. Marketization and accompanying privatization do not create an independent sphere where only money matters, but due to a mix of new socioeconomic motives, they produce n…
Accumulation through derealization: How corporate violence remains unchecked
This study examines the alleged organization of violence by Coca-Cola through a field study conducted in a village in India. It draws on the works of Judith Butler to show how subaltern groups are derealized and made into ungrievable lives through specific, yet recurrent, practices that keep violence unchecked. Many participants attempt to resist derealization through protest activities that showcase their vulnerability. However, the firm appropr…
Unsettling India: Affect, Temporality, Transnationality
In the last 20 years, India has witnessed visible, and often acrimonious, contests between global and local, modernity and tradition, markets and the State. The economic domain has seen a shift fro
Curry
Marketplace icons are often markers of transnational transactions engendered by commercialization and dominance of the West. Curry as a marketplace icon helps to identify these constituents of iconicity. This article briefly examines the historical roots of curry or spicy Indian food and its implication in the project of colonialism. Curry as a signifier of Indian food was invented in British colonial narratives and shaped by commercial interests…
Alternative Organisations in India: Undoing Boundaries
This book studies accounts of alternative organisations in India and provides critical insights on if and why alternative organisations matter to management theory and practice, how management theory can be applied to the context of alternative organisations, and how, from an alternate organisational perspective, existing debates in management can be enriched. Some other questions examined in this book are: what are spaces of organising outside c…
Dispossessing vulnerable consumers: Derealization, desubjectification, and violence
This article draws upon the work of Judith Butler to explain how violence is deployed against vulnerable consumers. It examines a site in which a commercial complex including a shopping mall is to be constructed in Ejipura, Bangalore (India), by displacing the poor from their slums. It offers insights into the mechanisms of violent dispossession that inhere liberal modes of governance of consumers. Moreover, this study attends to derealization th…
The Development of Political Consumerism in India: A Historical Perspective
This chapter provides a historical view of the development of political consumerism in India and details its present-day manifestations. Political consumerism in India emerged during the colonial period and was rooted in Gandhian ideologies such as swadeshi . The chapter highlights how swadeshi has been co-opted by political and business interests, which have recast it as a form of ascendant economic nationalism. Strategies such as boycotting hav…
Normative Violence in Domestic Service: A Study of Exploitation, Status, and Grievability
This paper contributes to business ethics by focusing on consumption that is characterized by normative violence. By drawing on the work of Judith Butler this study of kajer lok —a female subaltern group of Indian domestic service providers—and their higher status clients shows how codes of status-based consumption shaped by markets, class, caste, and patriarchy create a social order that reduces kajer lok to “ungreivable” lives. Our study contri…
The Regeneration of Consumer Movement Solidarity
Consumer research has focused on the various resources and tactics that help movements achieve a range of institutional and marketplace changes. Yet, little attention has been paid to the persistence of movement solidarity, in particular its regeneration, despite a range of threats to it. Our research unpacks mechanisms that help consumer movement solidarity to overcome threats. Drawing on a 6-year ethnographic study of consumer movements in Exar…
Decolonizing marketing
In January 2021, the ETHOS Research Center at Bayes Business School, along with the CRIS Research Center at Royal Holloway University of London, hosted an event entitled Decolonizing the Business School. Over 500 attendees participated, from all business disciplines, testifying to the strong levels of interest in this topic. Marketing was particularly active, with over 100 participants. In this article, I (Giana Eckhardt, one of the organizers of…
Money, Sacrificial Work, and Poor Consumers
This is an ethnography among poor migrants from Kerala, India to the Middle East. This study offers insights into how the poor accumulate sacrificial money through sufferings and self-abnegation, and earmark it for consumption in Kerala. The hardships endured to earn the sacrificial money transform it into a sacred object. The phenomena of accumulation, earmarking, and meaning making of sacrificial money by the poor can be understood through the …
Post-Colonial Consumer Respect and the Framing of Neocolonial Consumption in Advertising
This study of the production, representation, and reception of post-colonial advertising in India reveals a politics of consumer respectability. The post-colonial politics of consumer respectability is located at the intersection of center-periphery relations, class divisions, and colorism in a way that it frames neocolonial consumption. Advertisers depict middle-class consumer respectability by asserting Indian nationalism and by degrading the W…
Theorizing necroptics: Invisibilization of violence and death-worlds
This paper examines the invisibilization of violence and deaths in India’s leading daily during the 1918 influenza pandemic, the Times of India. The pandemic killed more than 14 million Indians in a short span of time. Studying this historical event and the way it was reported in an influential newspaper, this research shows how media representations not only invisibilized the alarming levels of mortality, but also elided the efforts of colonial …
The Routledge Companion to Critical Marketing
Sociology (17 works) · Political science (15 works) · Law (11 works) · Social science (9 works) · Politics (8 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (7 works) · Aesthetics (6 works) · Political economy (6 works) · Colonialism (5 works) · Economics (5 works)