FASHION, CLASS, AND CULTURAL ADAPTATION: RE-SITUATING GODNA WITHIN THE SOCIOLOGY OF FASHION

This article explains how Godna, the traditional tattooing practices among Santhal communities, can be understood through the same sociological lenses scholars use to analyze fashion.Rather than viewing Godna as a static folk custom, we approach it as a dynamic social text whose meanings shift as it circulates between communities, markets, and institutions. Classic fashion theories, ranging from early ideas about imitation and diffusion (Mandeville, 1714/1924; Spencer, 1897; Tarde, 1903) to twentieth-century accounts of conspicuous consumption and distinction (Veblen, 1899; Simmel, 1957; Bourdieu, 1984; Davis, 1991), offer a clear framework for understanding why Godna can be admired as ornamentation in one setting yet stigmatized or sanitized in another. In this explanatory account, we slow down each theoretical step.We define fashion as patterned change unfolding within a background of social order, and then show, with accessible examples, how Godna's movement from village rite to “heritage fashion” follows familiar status dynamics.We highlight three mechanisms that make the connection concrete: distinction and emulation (who imitates whom,and why status rises or falls as a look spreads),conversion of capitals (how embodied skill and ritual knowledge become economic or symbolic value), and institutional translation (how museums, NGOs, brands, and design schools legitimize some versions of Godna while muting others). Drawing on interpretive synthesis and field insights from eastern India (2023–2025), we present Godna as a living demonstration of fashion's sociological processes. Like garments that move from exclusivity to mass uptake and back to elite differentiation, Godna's motifs and placements travel across class boundaries, encountering both opportunities (recognition, income, safety standards) and risks (appropriation,loss of provenance,unequal rewards).The article concludes with practical implications on provenance, pedagogy, public curation, and workplace inclusion. By treating Godna as fashion and heritage, we show how cultural adaptation can achieve class legitimization without erasing women's authorship or community meanings (Bourdieu,1984;Wuthnow,1987;Davis,1991).