Fake it Till You Make it: The Trouble with the Global East Category

The article engages in a discussion with Martin Müller’s article In Search of a Global East through the categories of class and class distinction. While recognizing the potential political value of the “Global East” project, the author questions the ideological mechanisms which naturalize the stereotype of “Eastness as forsakenness.” As she points out, one of the effects of the “political and epistemological project” of the North–South divide (as well as stereotypical categorizations of the East) is obscuring the internal class dynamics of Northern, Southern and Eastern societies. In contrast, introducing class analysis – which includes examining such practices as producing and buying counterfeits of original, luxury-brand commodities – allows us to uncover similar patterns of class distinction and reproduction across global capitalist societies of the North, South and East, and perhaps also to forge solidarities amongst classes which are regularly oppressed by the dominant global capitalist order.