Blue Jeans: The Art of the Ordinary

179 Pages·2012·0.527 MB·English

by  Daniel Miller, Susan Woodward

Blue Jeans
The Art of the Ordinary
Daniel Miller and
Sophie Woodward
university of california press
Berkeley • Los Angeles • London
Blue Jeans

Blue Jeans
The Art of the Ordinary
Daniel Miller and
Sophie Woodward
university of california press
Berkeley • Los Angeles • London
University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university
presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing
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University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, En gland
© 2012 by The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data
Miller, Daniel, 1954–
Blue jeans : the art of the ordinary / Daniel Miller and Sophie Woodward.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-520-27218-7 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-520-27219-4
(pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Jeans (Clothing)—Social aspects. 2. Denim—Social
aspects. 3. Clothing and dress. 4. Material culture. I. Woodward,
Sophie. II. Title.
GT2085.M55 2011
391.4'76—dc23
2011036634
Manufactured in the United States of America
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and
sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on Rolland
Enviro100, a 100% post- consumer fi ber paper that is FSC certifi ed, deinked,
pro cessed chlorine-f ree, and manufactured with renewable biogas energy. It
is acid-f ree and EcoLogo certifi ed.
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1. Life 16
2. Relationships 30
3. Fashion 46
4. Comfortable 65
5. Ordinary 84
6. The Struggle for Ordinary 102
7. Anthropology: From Normative to Ordinary 121
8. Sociology: The Ordinary and the Routine 139
Bibliography 157
Index 165

Ac know ledg ments
As always in such work, our fi rst ack nowl edg ment has to be to our par-
ticipants. We are always amazed, but also very grateful, when so many
people agree to open their doors and give us time, especially when there
can be little pretense that a topic such as denim would ever be of much
direct benefi t to them. There is something about the graciousness of
ordinary people that a project such as this brings out, and it is always
worth acknowledging. We are very grateful too for the help of Alesya
Krit and Sabrina Miller, our two interns. Given our commitments to
teaching and university administrative duties, we could not have done
this research without a grant toward the transcribing of interviews
from The British Academy (award number SG-4 9624), the only funding
we had for this project. We would also like to thank Naomi Braith-
waite, who helped collect background bibliographic information and
collate our more quantitative information. An earlier version of chapter 7
appeared in American Ethnologist as “Anthropology in Blue Jeans.”
vii

Introduction
why denim?
This book is intended to advance contemporary material culture stud-
ies. We draw on interviews and observations of how people select and
wear blue jeans in our effort to create a theory of the ordinary and its
place in social science.* This theory of the ordinary has major conse-
quences for topics ranging from immigration to questions of identity,
equality, and the routine. While such a claim might initially appear to be
somewhat grandiose, our aim is to arrive at these theoretical contribu-
tions through the course of this book, building upon the collection and
analysis of empirical observations. The inspiration behind this sequence
lies in Claude Lévi-S trauss’s exhortation to anthropologists to rethink
the limits of their enterprise by considering the discipline to be a kind of
philosophy by other means. This book may be read both by those who
are simply interested in why people wear blue jeans and also by people
with no interest in clothing, as the topic of jeans is used to create a con-
tribution to the study of humanity more generally through our theory of
the ordinary.
* In this volume the terms blue jeans and denim are generally synonymous, which accords
with the usage of our inf or mants, though on occasion we will refer to items other than
jeans made from denim.
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