Vernacular Capitalism, Advertising, and the Bazaar in Early Twentieth-Century Western India

doi:10.1017/9781108762533.005

5 - Vernacular Capitalism, Advertising, and the Bazaar in Early Twentieth-Century Western India

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2020

Douglas E. Haynes

Edited by

Ajay Gandhi ,

Barbara Harriss-White ,

Douglas E. Haynes and

Sebastian Schwecke

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Ajay Gandhi: Affiliation:
Universiteit Leiden
Barbara Harriss-White: Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Douglas E. Haynes: Affiliation:
Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
Sebastian Schwecke: Affiliation:
Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta

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Summary

This chapter examines the way small manufacturing firms in western India began to use advertisement in the print media to develop markets for their goods during the early twentieth century.The chapter suggests that advertising gave small producers an opportunity to create the cultural meanings of commodities far away from the point of production.In many cases, they sought to usurp the role of local mercantile actors in fashioning product meanings; that is, they attempted to disembed the process of meaning construction from their local contexts.The chapter explores how advertisements became central to the operations of three firms involved in making indigenous medicines: Amritdhara, Jadibuti, and Dhootapapeshwa.Though the efforts of small manufacturers to undercut the role of local agents were only partially successful and often led to new forms of embedment, advertising was crucial to the creation of a “vernacular capitalism” that has largely been ignored by scholars.

Keywords

advertising India vernacular capitalism medicine market bazaar print media Amritdhara Dhootapapeshwar Jadibuti

Type: Chapter
Information: Rethinking Markets in Modern India
Embedded Exchange and Contested Jurisdiction
, pp. 116 - 146

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108762533.005 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2020

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5 - Vernacular Capitalism, Advertising, and the Bazaar in Early Twentieth-Century Western India

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