Consumption within a soft total institution: Discursive inculcation in the Tablighi Jamaat

Abstract

Abstract Erving Goffman’s concept of total institutions has been seldom explored in terms of how it restricts or promotes consumption practices. In an effort to redress the lacuna in the extant literature, this article draws on the findings of an ethnographic study of the Tablighi Jamaat, an orthodox religious organization originating in South Asia, whose participants undergo discursive inculcation in an environment that may be characterized as a soft total institution. We explore how consumption in such an environment entails processes of traditionalization under (late) modernity. Our findings show that consumption in a soft total institution requires subjects to monitor their own behavior discursively in order to attain certain intended, spiritual objectives. The study has implications for how consumption can be a means by which to either meet or inhibit life goals. In terms of theoretical contribution, this article begins to demarcate the boundary conditions between Goffman’s total institution and, what we are terming here, a soft total institution. Finally, we further Goffman’s original thesis by describing some of the subjects’ thoughts and experiences of their daily lives after their inculcation within the institutionalized setting.

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