Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East

    
#373
Title: Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East
Author: Gita Mehta
Year: 1994
Publisher: Vintage
208 pages

Best read as a collection of essays on related themes, not a progressive essay in parts. Mehta's classic is still highly relevant, though perhaps less startling than it would have been on publication 30 years ago. Her primary topic is the atomizing and commodification of culture, illustrated by examples of both naive and pragmatic responses by Westerners and Indians. Most of the essays are well-written and enjoyable to read; some are too divorced by time and culture from their catalysts and are therefore less explicable. If I were teaching a cross-cultural sociology class, I'd use Karma Cola as a starting point.