Commodifying Authenticity

Fabricating Authenticity - Jason W.M. Ellsworth

Jason W.M. Ellsworth [+-]
Dalhousie University
Jason W. M. Ellsworth is a Research Fellow, doctoral candidate, and sessional Lecturer in the Sociology & Social Anthropology Department at Dalhousie University. His research focuses on the study of the Anthropology & Sociology of Religion, Buddhism in North America, Food & Food Movements, Theories of Value, Political Economy, Marketing, Transnationalism, and Orientalism.
Andie Alexander [+-]
Leibniz University Hannover
Andie Alexander is a doctoral candidate in the Institute for the Study of Religion at Leibniz University Hannover. She is co-editor (with Jason W. M. Ellsworth) of Fabricating Authenticity (Equinox, 2024) and is Managing Editor of The Religious Studies Project. Her research focuses on identity construction, discourses of difference and experience, and conceptions of the individual as a way to examine how post-9/11 discourses of inclusivity and pluralism implicitly work as a form of governance and subject-making which construct and constrain the liberal Muslim subject. 

Description

In addition to the 28 chapters, this volume has a longer, more substantive Introduction and Afterword that offer a variety of examples exploring what’s at stake in discourses on authenticity and how they are inextricably linked to what Jean-François Bayart terms “operational acts of identification.” The Introduction, through a variety of examples such as self-help books, Coca-Cola, national cuisines, and wine, considers how authenticity rhetoric is employed and commodified, demonstrating just how pervasive it is in our current social worlds. Rather than joining the “authenticity” debates, this volume aims to complicate and problematize discourses of authenticity, which are otherwise left unexamined or even taken at face value, to examine the practical effects and consequences of these claims.

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Citation

Ellsworth, Jason W.M.; Alexander, Andie. Commodifying Authenticity. Fabricating Authenticity. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. p. Aug 2024. ISBN 9781800501454. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=40261. Date accessed: 29 Mar 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.40261. Aug 2024

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