narratives of three generations of urban middle-class - eTheses ...

it” (Mennell, 1987: 389-390). It is interesting to note that although educated middle-class
taste and distinction underplayed the importance of economic capital over cultural and
symbolic capital in most of their narratives, economic capital was definitely an indicator
of one’s status and respectability in society. The important consideration is whether this
economic capital is spent on ‘tasteful’ and ‘refined’ artifacts and other cultural
representations that mark off class distinctions (Bourdieu, 1984).
Stories that compulsively expressed the desire for maintaining abhijato taste for
maintaining class distinction are not exhaustive of other stories within the same urban
middle-class society. Many subjects within this class fall in between the values of a
hedonistic new middle-class culture and the more restrained values of ‘traditional’ elite
middle-class. In adopting both the restrained elitism of middle-class culture and the
conspicuous consumption of the new middle-class, subjects destabilize the hegemonic
codes of class distinction and trouble and claimed dichotomy of the self and the other.
In fact, many subjects perform multiple and varying forms of marriage celebration and
do not necessarily associate the quality of ‘being cultured’ with ‘being sophisticatedly
restrained’. Third generation Tanya and Anandita are educated middle-class, the first
working as an IT professional and the other, as a professional in a bank. They both
narrativize a denial of uptight middle-class sophistication and narrativize the desire for
an open celebration of fun and pleasure within their heterosexual intimate spaces.
Anandita confidently emphisizes,
“Some ‘boring Bengalis’ do not like it but I ‘absolutely adore’ the flamboyant
Punjabi culture of marriage. I think it’s a lot of fun and a celebration of music and
colours. I decided to adopt ‘their ritual of mehendi ceremony’ (hand painting with
henna that also often inscribes the initial of the partner on the palm) and
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