This fresh and accessible ethnography offers a new vision of how society might cohere, in the face of on-going global displacement, dislocation, and migration. Drawing from intensive fieldwork in a highly diverse North London neighborhood, Daniel Miller and Sophie Woodward focus on an everyday item--blue jeans--to learn what one simple article of clothing can tell us about our individual and social lives and challenging, by extension, the foundational anthropological presumption of "the normative." Miller and Woodward argue that blue jeans do not always represent social and cultural difference, from gender and wealth, to style and circumstance. Instead they find that jeans allow individuals to inhabit what the authors term "the ordinary." Miller and Woodward demonstrate that the emphasis on becoming ordinary is important for immigrants and the population of North London more generally, and they call into question foundational principles behind anthropology, sociology and philosophy.

About the Author
Daniel Miller is Professor of Anthropology at University College, London. He is the author of many books, including The Comfort of Things, Stuff, and Tales from Facebook. Sophie Woodward is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester and the author of Why Women Wear What They Wear.

Reviews
"Blue Jeans provides a useful introduction to sociological theories and methodologies; it would be an ideal text for students." -- Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell Ornament



Book Information
ISBN 9780520272194
Author Daniel Miller
Format Paperback
Page Count 184
Imprint University of California Press
Publisher University of California Press
Weight(grams) 272g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 15mm