Imagining an Indian Identity: an Ethnography of Muslim Indian Women and Media Reception

In a nation as culturally diverse as India, national identity is the object of many contestations and negotiations. Of special interest is the way minority groups, such as Muslims, relate to the omnipresent representations of Indians as Hindus. This paper draws from ethnographic work with Muslim women in urban India and their relationship to the marketplace. Contrary to our expectations, Muslim Indian women related to the motivations of women depicted in ads which are often based on family and kinship relations. They did not see the absence of Muslim characters in the media as a form of oppression but preferred it to being misrepresented

Citation:

Julien Cayla (2009) ,"Imagining an Indian Identity: an Ethnography of Muslim Indian Women and Media Reception", in AP - Asia-Pacific Advances in Consumer Research Volume 8, eds. Sridhar Samu, Rajiv Vaidyanathan, and Dipankar Chakravarti, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 27-29.