Kerala is a well-recognized ‘model’ of human development in the world. In this article, I look at a crucial aspect of this development, which is often approached in a positivist fashion of statistical aggregation alone: consumption. Instead, there is a need to study the meanings that surround it. I delineate the many forces, particularly the new material infrastructure, that have driven consumption in the last three decades, especially the last one. With increasing integration into global market forces through migration and investment, and cultural imaginations, I show that there is a tectonic change in consciousness about consumption, marked by fantasies, desires, and, contrarily, feelings of excess and ambivalence. I argue that the non-market sector has also played an important role in consumption. There is an increasing generalization of certain ideas about consumption as well as disenchantments across classes. But critically, I contend, there are caste, class, and gender disparities in consumption as well as differences in the meanings attributed to it. Thus, consumption is a socially meaningful, but discrepant, space. This article is based on fieldwork conducted in a town in central Kerala, supplemented with quantitative data.

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“享受生活”：印度喀拉拉邦的消费、不断变化的意义和社会分化

喀拉拉邦是世界上公认的人类发展“典范”。在本文中，我着眼于这一发展的一个关键方面，它通常仅以统计汇总的实证主义方式进行处理：消费。相反，有必要研究围绕它的含义。我描述了过去三十年（尤其是最后一个）推动消费的众多力量，尤其是新的物质基础设施。随着通过移民和投资以及文化想象力越来越多地融入全球市场力量，我表明消费意识发生了结构性变化，其特征是幻想、欲望，以及相反的过度和矛盾情绪。我认为非市场部门在消费中也发挥了重要作用。关于消费的某些想法以及跨阶级的祛魅越来越普遍。但我认为，至关重要的是，消费中存在种姓、阶级和性别差异，以及赋予它的含义也存在差异。因此，消费是一个具有社会意义但存在差异的空间。本文基于在喀拉拉邦中部城镇进行的实地调查，辅以定量数据。