Consuming postcolonial shopping malls

Through a naturalistic inquiry, we interpret shopping malls in India as post-colonial sites in which young consumers deploy the West in an attempt to transform their Third World identities. Shopping malls in former colonies represent a post-colonial hybridity that offers consumers the illusion of being Western, modern, and developed. Moreover, consumption of post-colonial retail arenas is characterised as a masquerade through which young consumers attempt to disguise or temporarily transcend their Third World realities. This interpretation helps us to offer insights into transitioning retail servicescapes of the Third World, which in turn helps to improve extant understanding of consumer identity and global consumer culture.

Disciplining the discipline: understanding postcolonial epistemic ideology in marketing

In this study, conducted in two top ranked business schools in India, we examine pedagogy and doctoral research in marketing and show that the discipline is characterised by dependency on the West. We offer an understanding of postcolonial epistemic ideology that is contributing to the creation of unreflexive and dependent subjectivities in the discipline. We show that the marketing discourse in postcoloniality is characterised by mimesis of the West and silencing of local subaltern stakeholders. We further show that epistemic ideology disciplines through the deployment of devices developed in the West to create a compradorian theatre.

The languages of postcolonial ireland and their potential for cultural expression

Ireland is a country in which two languages are spoken: English and Irish. This thesis analyzes the historical relationship between the languages, the cultural codes and meanings attached to each of them, as well as how much of the culture of its speakers each is able to carry. Beyond that, the influence the two languages have exercised on one another and their mutual entwinement is taken into closer examination.