Shifting Boundaries of “Nativity” and “Modernity” in South Asian Women’s Clothes

Abstract.

In the last two decades the postmodernist (POMO) scholars have popularized the concepts of subjectivity, authenticity, modernity, and nativity in academia while rejecting the role of larger structural, institutional and historical forces (referred as meta-narrative) in understanding social and cultural issues. This essay challenges POMO scholar’s approach by focusing on the case of South Asian women’s personal experiences and choices (subjectivity) historically with their every day clothes (everyday culture), both nationally and trans-nationally. This essay highlights the role of various local, historical, social, economic, political, colonial, and international forces that contributed in creating particular dress code and style (social reproduction of customs) for women of different social groups in South Asia in different historical times. With this approach it was possible to eliminate the binary concepts of nativity/modernity, progressive/primitive, developed/undeveloped etc., and treat all societies in the world with the same yardstick, while at the same time acknowledging the unequal relationship between the colonizers and colonized. This essay is also an attempt to suggest how everyday cultural issues can be historically explained in an inclusive manner without sacrificing the role of human agency, (human creativity, human capabilities, actions, and subjectivity), the role of imagination (creativity), the role of structural and institutional forces (meta-narrative), and the role of cultural forces (religion, nationalism, customs, and others), and cultural experiences in everyday life. At the same time everyday cultural issues are contextualized historically (time and space—locally and globally), politically, culturally, and economically as well.