Governing and Calculating Everyday Dress

Authors

  • Ingrid Jeacle University of Edinburgh

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.v0i13.3508

Abstract

Drawing on Foucault’s governmentality thesis, together with the insightful lens offered by Miller and Rose’s seminal work “Governing Economic Life,” this paper suggests that the ‘quick response’ initiatives deployed by contemporary fashion chains to address the problem of ‘fast fashion,’ are illustrative examples of technologies for governing economic life. The meticulous recording and the minute surveillance regimes of the apparatus of quick response, renders the phenomenon of fast fashion knowable and administrable. Calculative technologies operate according to a normalising process that separates the fashionable from the unfashionable. Calculative practices also perpetuate the phenomenon of fast fashion by facilitating the faster flow of both product and information. In so doing, they both construct and sustain mass fashion.

Author Biography

Ingrid Jeacle, University of Edinburgh

Ingrid Jeacle is a Reader in Accounting at the University of Edinburgh. Ingrid Jeacle's research seeks to broaden the scope of accounting scholarship by recognizing the richness in exploring the inter-linkages between accounting and popular culture. Her focus on arenas such as fashion, shopping, travel, cinema and architecture attempts not only to further an understanding of accounting, but also the ways and means in which calculative practices and notions of accountability permeate our everyday lives. She has recently guest edited a special issue on the theme of Accounting and Popular Culture for Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal.

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Published

2012-04-24

How to Cite

Jeacle, I. (2012). Governing and Calculating Everyday Dress. Foucault Studies, (13), 82–98. https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.v0i13.3508

Issue

Number 13: May 2012: Foucault and Accounting

Section

Special Issue on Foucault and Accounting

License

Authors retain copyright to their work, but assign the right of the first publication to Foucault Studies. The work is subject to a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, but despite these restrictions, authors can take for granted that Foucault Studies will permit articles published in Foucault Studies to be translated or reprinted in another format such as a book providing a full reference is made to Foucault Studies as the original place of publication.