Date

2022-7

Author

Aktürk, Naz Nisan

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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Slow fashion is often presented as having a stable set of principles and rules in the literature, and there is a lack of focus on the individuals and communities who practice slow fashion in their daily lives. This thesis explores how norms of sustainability and ethical consumption are constructed among home sewists who participate in the garment sewing community on Instagram. By utilising the data I collected from 25 in- depth interviews with community members and 2 years of participant observation, I discuss how virtual community building and maintenance practices contribute to the construction of normalcy in slow fashion and how practices of making and buying clothes serve as ethical work. Through a Foucauldian approach to ethics, I first question how community building and maintenance practices like community rituals, knowledge sharing, establishing symbolic boundaries and techniques of inclusivity contribute to the community members’ ability to recognise their place in the broader movement of slow fashion, as well as feeling the obligations that come with being an active member and practitioner of slow fashion. I then analyse how the knowledge of making and buying the most sustainable and ethical sorts of clothes are communicated between members, what sorts of rules and guidelines members create and follow in their sewing, buying and dressing practices, how questioning their own morals can uncover their sense of ethics, and how they engage in ethical consumption.

Subject Keywords

Slow fashion, Home sewing, Ethical consumption, Virtual communities

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/98178

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis