%0 Journal Article
%T Consuming wellness, producing difference: The case of a wellness center in India
%A Sneha Annavarapu
%J Journal of Consumer Culture
%@ 1741-2900
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/1469540516682583
%X Over the past decade, there has been a discernible rise in the number of wellness centers and fitness studios in urban cities in India. These centers are spatial manifestations of the rise in a particular type of ˇ°self-careˇ± regimes and ˇ°body projectsˇ± in modern social imaginary prevalent in urban India, predominantly enabled by the rise of middle-class consumer culture. While the literature on fitness spaces and wellness clubs in Western contexts is instructive to a very large extent, the local particularities of consumption experiences in non-Western contexts require contextualized empirical research in order to better inform modern theories of consumption. This article is a study of a wellness center in the South Indian city of Chennai. Using ethnographic methods, I attempt to unpack the experience of consuming wellness in a space that ostensibly claims to remedy the ills of modern living while doing so in a culturally traditional and ˇ°Indianˇ± manner. I show how the experiences of predominantly middle-class consumers here are dictated not by a sentimental attachment to tradition or locality, but by a vocabulary of speaking that primarily favors a language of consumer choice and rational decision-making. Whether or not that is the case, the way in which consumption of an ˇ°Indianˇ± brand of wellness occurs demonstrates the stronghold of the language of consumer choice making the space at the wellness center a performative arena for self-identity formation to occur
%K Consumption
%K wellness
%K urbanity
%K identity
%K India
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1469540516682583