Fashioning the nation in the age of populism

Bibliographic Data

ID2181985
AuthorsMolnar (0000-0003-1156-9238, New School, corresponding author), Virág Molnár
Year2025
Volume18
Issue1
Pages68-91
Publication date2025-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Cultural Economy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1753-0350 • E-ISSN: 1753-0369
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17530350.2024.2373158
OpenAlexW4404082247
LanguageEN
References cited59

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