Introduction1

Novelty from the semi-periphery is a well-established finding in organization studies, economic sociology, strategic management, and the sociology of culture. Attempts to verify and explain it have supported the development of landmark concepts including structural holes, weak ties, and global competitive advantages (Granovetter 1973; Porter 1990; Burt 2004; Cattani and Ferriani 2008). The basic argument is that core actors face a problem of redundancy while peripheral actors are challenged by a lack of resources. Meanwhile, semi-peripheral actors operate in a middle ground with opportunities and barriers that both enhance and degrade their prospects for movement toward the core (Phillips and Zuckerman 2001; Buchholz 2022; Kuipers et al. 2022). Attempts to change positions can succeed, backfire, or adaptively reinforce positions within an existing sphere of competition. Each outcome is worthy of further study for its own analytical reasons (cf. Voronov et al. 2013; Cattani et al. 2017). In the case below, the success of suppliers in the global semi-periphery is particularly interesting because of the powerful structural and institutional barriers that previous researchers have identified.

Upgrading is defined as the strategic movement of a firm toward sustainable competitive advantage. Value chain scholars typically focus on changes in skill or value-added activities that reposition firm advantages within a given set of linkages (Porter 1990; Gereffi 1999; Sturgeon 2009).2 Design is conventionally understood as a premium indicator of a value-added and knowledge-intensive service that we expect to find only within the core. It specifically represents a case of “functional” upgrading, i.e., an increase in the skill of value chain activities (Humphrey and Schmitz 2002, 1020ff). More broadly, like other forms of art (Parsons 1935), design is regularly exempted from accounts of voluntarism, routinization, and rationalization. Fashion design is a case in point. Across the social sciences, fashion design is almost always represented as a special kind of work. It is widely believed to depend on tacit knowledge that is locally and institutionally “sticky,” and thus restricted to design hubs in Western markets. Western brands and their designers lead in media coverage, intellectual property rights, and cultural authority (Filippetti and D’Ippolito 2017; Kuipers et al. 2022).3 New York, London, Paris, and Milan are the “Big Four” of the fashion field (Godart 2014).

In contrast to these expectations, a recent set of publications has revealed significant original design manufacturing by export-oriented suppliers in the semi-peripheries of Turkey (Tokatli et al. 2008; Tokatli and Kızılgün 2009), India (Hoppe 2019, 2022, 2023), Bangladesh (Sinkovics et al. 2018), and East/Southeast Asia (Sturgeon and Lester 2001, Table 1). Most of the data comes from case studies; it shows 5–15 percent of orders originating from supply-side design in the 2000s. More recent estimates at some firms top 50 percent. Designs created by Asian suppliers in backstage production markets clearly circulate through global design research and trend developments, fulfilling a “generative” dimension of novelty. At the same time, however, Asian suppliers have limited access to the “legitimation” dimension of novelty (Cattani et al. 2015; see also Kuipers et al. 2022).

While global value chain (GVC) scholars regularly discuss fragmentation and upgrading, we understand much less about the mechanisms and processes that enable semi-peripheral upgrading. The key question I ask in this article is how it is possible, amid a bevy of obstacles, for designers to gain tacit knowledge and to perform culturally intensive work in the semi-periphery. One powerful but overlooked driver of creation and exchange is interaction rituals, “a mechanism of mutually focused emotion and attention producing a momentarily shared reality, which thereby generates solidarity and symbols of group membership” (Collins 2004, 7). The theory builds on Durkheim and Goffman to explain “precontractual” moral commitments and the creation of novelty. It can fulfill searches for the microfoundational antecedents of networks, trust, or truth by treating these not as freestanding coordination mechanisms or abstract institutional variables, but as dynamic interactional products.4 Going forward, I acknowledge that linking the internal dynamics of micro-level analysis to the governance structures of GVCs is a tall order. Not every link of ritual and value chains can be documented here. But by focusing on design as a case of upgrading, we at least stand to gain a better understanding of the puzzle of semi-peripheral upgrading.

The paper proceeds in five steps. First, I set up the problem of upgrading with reference to fragmentation, uncertainty, and tacit knowledge in the apparel industry. These conditions have supported decades of skeptical arguments in management and the social sciences. Second, I identify competing frameworks and concepts that support the possibility of upgrading. Most of these are found at macro- and meso-levels of analysis in GVC and network research. I propose interaction ritual chains as a complementary micro-level framework that can animate the dynamics of novelty and exchange. Third, the methods section covers ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and coding. Fourth, the body of the paper analyzes interaction rituals in ethnographic detail. Emotion and attention are crucial for buyer selections and trend creations. Fifth, I examine how the practical and process-oriented theory of interaction ritual chains complements current discussions in literatures on GVCs, political economy, and global field theory.

The Problem of Upgrading: Fragmentation, Uncertainty, and Tacit Knowledge

Among both intellectuals and policymakers, there is extensive opposition to the possibility of semi-peripheral upgrading into design. Although opposition is too deep and too broad to fully review here,5 skeptical arguments can be grouped into five major (nonexclusive) categories: (1) a limited Western/metro-centric attention space; (2) background structural and institutional conditions; (3) short lead times; (4) strategies of value creation; and (5) requirements for local knowledge, skills, and networks. At this point, because the “attention space” category is a longstanding background condition of global knowledge production (e.g., Chorev and Ball 2022, 173; Go 2013; Hughes 1961), I must dispense with it only by first noting the uncontested prevalence of Paris, New York, London, and Milan in research and media coverage on the fashion industry (Godart 2014), and second, by saving the specific relevance of a few semi-peripheral studies for the discussion section.

Background conditions

Scholars from both liberal and critical backgrounds have long identified background structural and institutional barriers to what we now call semi-peripheral upgrading. Implicit conditions like local trust (see below) were noted already by Adam Smith in his discussion of the “invisible hand,” which is a “natural inclination” to favor domestic rather than foreign investment ([1776] 1976, 477–78).6 Liberal and neoliberal economists often assign accidental explanations to major location patterns of development in the textile and apparel industries. Krugman (1991a, 1991b), for example, points out that a simple pattern of agglomeration can have long-term effects, regardless of its initial cause. Western firms that happen to have rich factor resources—intangible or otherwise—should then leverage them to focus on higher-value activities.7 Meanwhile, emerging economies with labor-abundant factor inputs are encouraged to accept sweatshops as an appropriate strategy for development (Krugman 1997; Myerson 1997; Pollin et al. 2004; Rivoli 2005, 86–107; Powell 2014).

While Marxist and critical scholars have always been far more attentive to colonial actions and legacies in the textile and apparel industries (e.g., Marx [1853] 2006), most continue to express skepticism about prospects for upgrading. Critical perspectives in sociology, geography, and development studies are usually concerned with the most basic problems of upgrading, e.g., child labor and corporate social responsibility for sweatshop labor conditions. Frameworks emphasize the primary ethical responsibilities of brands and consumers (e.g., Amsden 2001, 31–50; Collins 2003; Harrison and Scorse 2010; Anner et al. 2012; Amengual and Bartley 2022). Because suppliers face potentially overwhelming structural constraints, supplier strategies are typically viewed as derivative. For example, scholars have shown how decades of U.S. industrial and trade policy blocked apparel imports through quotas.8 This had the effect of fragmenting producer markets, which increased competition among suppliers. The result is that suppliers had a harder time sustaining competitive advantages that might have been gained from upgrading (Schrank 2004). Thus, although the causal logic between neoliberal and critical scholars is quite different, they share skepticism about the prospect of upgrading into design.

Lead times

Especially in the age of fast fashion, authors from marketing, supply chain management, and policy emphasize the challenges of long design and production timelines in Asia (i.e., lead times). Because fashion is a fragmented market in which forecasting, design, and buying are famously difficult, retailers cannot make a specific product fashionable even with dedicated efforts in marketing or other forms of coordination. One proposal, repeated in dozens of studies since the 1960s (e.g., Cachon and Swinney 2011; Joint Economic Committee 2015, 5), is to reduce risk by reducing lead times, in part by locating design and production close to major Western markets.

Value creation

Design is almost always marked as a high-value activity. This does not only mean that generic product innovation or command-and-control strategies are expected from high-income countries (e.g., Vernon 1979; Buckley 2009).9 Apparel is also a prototypical example of a “buyer-driven” value chain, with “profits [coming] from combinations of high-value research, design, sales, marketing, and financial services that allow the retailers, designers and marketers to act as strategic brokers” (Gereffi 1994; Bair and Gereffi 2001, 1895; Fernandez-Stark et al. 2011, 7, 11). Most GVC authors argue that branded firms have “tenaciously held on to product conception, design, and marketing—the highest value-added activities—while subcontracting [assembly] production” (Bonacich et al. 1994; Collins 2001, 177; 2003, 119; Schrank 2004, 138; Gereffi and Frederick 2010, 7). Skeptical variations of arguments positioning design as a form of value creation have been extensively developed among literatures on GVCs, international business, international and labor economics, strategy, and other fields.10

Local requirements

The presumption of local knowledge, skills, and networks is the most cited reason for skepticism about the offshoring of design. In almost all industries, we expect information transfers to be easier with proximity and harder with distance (e.g., Williamson 1981). For cultural industries in particular, arguments are amplified based on everything from the supposed necessity of “street-level serendipity” in New York (Jacobs 1969, 12, 51, 237–39; Uzzi 1997) to trust and a common culture as prerequisites for thick ties.11 For both buyers and designers, tacit knowledge, cultural sensibilities, and shared dispositions are usually understood as necessary preconditions for navigating the uncertainty of taste markets (e.g., Entwistle 2006). Because semi-peripheral firms are unlikely to have acquired the right sensibilities, analysts suggest hiring foreign staff or relying on ethnic ties to designers in Western markets to overcome semi-peripheral disadvantages (e.g., Aspers 2010, 202–3, Tokatli and Kızılgün 2004).

Structures, lead times, strategy, and local knowledge can all be cast as conditions that explain the low probabilities for semi-peripheral upgrading. Studies on these topics establish the status quo; they identify either exceptional characteristics of the core or barriers to entry for the semi-periphery. Against this background it is useful to have comparative perspectives oriented toward discovery. Scholars can turn toward interaction ritual chains to analyze variations in the small group interactions that propel the development of GVCs.

The Potential for Upgrading: Value and Interaction Ritual Chains

Amid broad skepticism, a smaller group of scholars have been identifying potential network and governance foundations of upgrading. I say “potential” in a conditional sense because in good Weberian fashion, possibilities are usually abstract and qualified. I also say “potential” in a positive sense because they add real promise to theorizing. One can build microfoundations into these larger concepts and paradigms. So, although pictures may be sweeping, scholars of globalization discuss advances in global communication (Castells 2010). Or, although they usually analyze STEM industries within high-wage economies, scholars of innovation clearly identify the fragmentation of collaboration in industrial networks (Powell 1998; Whitford and Potter 2007; Herrmann et al. 2012; Whitford 2012). Or, although field analyses of fashion typically bifurcate the symbolic and the material according to geography, global field theory gives wide latitude to commercial growth in the semi-periphery (Buchholz 2022). Similar stories can be told of related lines of research in strategy and geography (Amin and Thrift 1992; Porter 1998).

A slow shift in the governance relations of GVCs is closer to the issue at hand. As brands have consolidated their supply chains, first-tier suppliers have improved their size, strategies, and capabilities (Appelbaum 2008; Gereffi 2014; Dallas 2015; Sako and Zylberberg 2017; Sinkovics et al. 2018; Shin 2023). Perhaps a minor point here is a touch of ambivalence among GVC insiders about whether design should be included under the label of “full-package production”; for the value-creation reasons I identified above, usually it is not (cf. Collins 2003, 119; Schrank 2004; Tokatli and Kızılgün 2004).12 A major point is that upgrading is never automatic. Instead, it is always mediated by organizational learning, the labor process, and a set of interactions that are rarely presented with ethnographic dynamism.13 Because so much research on geography, networks, and GVCs takes a bird’s-eye view, cultural and action-theoretic perspectives on learning remain underdeveloped (Aspers 2001).

Benzecry’s recent ethnography of global craft coordination in footwear production is a strong step in the right direction. With influence from science and technology studies, he concludes that following craft-based routines makes the work “almost new every time, even when participating in the creation of a global mass commodity” (2022, 220). Tokatli (2013) has similarly pushed for detailed studies of work at supplier firms, arguing that we lack details on core questions of upgrading and can’t move forward without them. Indeed, well beyond apparel, authors working on theory, culture, and trade have all argued that we need more specific investigations—at the industry level and below—of the geo-cultural mechanisms that underpin the general dynamics of trade, upgrading, and learning (Sturgeon 2009; Zhou 2010, 1639; Marquis and Raynard 2015, 323–24; Buchholz 2022). In the case below, I argue that successful rituals function as an enabling practical mechanism (Gross 2009) that cuts across at least part of all five previous categories that have motivated skepticism.

Interaction ritual chains are fairly well-known in sociology, with the fullest exposition in Collins (2004). The strength of rituals varies according to the mix of their four major ingredients: copresence, barriers to outsiders, a shared mood, and mutual attention (see Figure 1). Combinations create situational entrainment that generates emotional energy (i.e., a moral suffusion of confidence and initiative) and ultimately the creation of a shared reality. While the simplest examples of interaction rituals are face-to-face conversations, chains scale up, via competition for emotional energy among interaction situations, into the staging of scenes, the creation of markets and fields, or the rise and fall of civilizations (e.g., Collins 1981, 1988).

Figure 1: Model of Interaction Ritual Chains (Collins 2004, 48, with permission).

In terms of frequency, situations—as with other pragmatist or interactionist theories—remain the typical unit of analysis. Sociologists and organization scholars have used interaction rituals and similar theories to study social movements (Summers-Effler 2010; Summers-Effler and Kwak 2015), the creation of knowledge and new institutional fields (Parker and Hackett 2012; Furnari 2014), brokerage (Furnari and Rolbina 2018), the sustainability of exchange and creative motivation (Cohendet and Simon 2016; Krishnan et al. 2020), and new product development, including surprisingly thick online exchanges (Metiu and Rothbard 2013; DiMaggio et al. 2019). A new and related theory of “group flow” is built from a separate literature in psychology and micro-organizational behavior (Lavoie et al. 2025), with experimental findings essentially confirming the expectations of interaction ritual theory.

Any empirical treatment of interaction ritual chains must be contextualized in one form or another; it must acknowledge degrees of structural and institutional realities. Building on what I interpret to be a fundamental theoretical role for incentives and opportunity structures in interaction ritual theory, my analysis is designed for compatibility with a historically contingent, demand-led vision of political economy that accelerated with the advent of GVCs in the 1960s (cf. Sombart [1913] 1967; Gereffi 2005; Hamilton and Shin 2015). In this vision, the production and consumption of recent cultural symbols generate dynamism within the capitalist economy. Interaction ritual chains can thus be understood as microfoundations of capitalism (Collins 1990, 1992, 1997; Beckert 2023). In my case, we shall see how emotional energy expands opportunity structures that are fueling the fragmentation of GVCs, and thus how it helps us to understand major contemporary changes in the origins of global cultural production.

Methods

Site selection

Among other sites, I gained access to eleven export-oriented apparel factories in India. Some locations are not disclosed for confidentiality, but most maintained offices in the Delhi National Capital Region, a cluster that is well-known for embellished womenswear (Khaire 2011). I conducted most of my ethnographic observations at a large supplier that I call MEI (Mass Exports India) and a medium-sized supplier that I call ACE (Apparel Craft Exports).14 The simple rationale for studying firms like ACE and MEI is that upgrading into design is most likely to be evident at the leading edge of suppliers (Choksy et al. 2017).15 These firms were larger and better capitalized than most of India’s other 11,000-plus apparel factories, with higher salaries and better-educated employees. They were first-tier suppliers, meaning that they maintained direct relationships with brands and sometimes engaged in their own subcontracting. The average export prices (free on board) were $6.18 at MEI and around $7.50 at ACE, higher than the industry average of $4.84. Both held ISO certifications for quality, sustainability, and management practices (Guler et al. 2002). The broader epistemological rationale for studying these sites is that, as noted above, scholars from economic sociology and political economy have conventionally framed differentiation as the strategic domain of Western brands. Alongside other GVC researchers who incorporate perspectives from management (see for example the handbook by Ponte et al. 2019), I hope to offer a strategically and regionally accurate corrective.

I cannot name brands (i.e., lead firms) because of confidentiality agreements. Nevertheless, under a hybrid of modular and relational governance relations (Gereffi et al. 2005), most brands contract with multiple suppliers who offer competing services. I gathered direct production evidence for 129 unique brands under eighty-seven parent companies. Fifty-seven percent of brands were North American, 38 percent European, and 6 percent Asian. Figure 2 was developed in consultation with suppliers, industry groups, and U.S. retail experts. It shows observed brands classified into market segments: 16 percent accessible luxury (e.g., Boss), 20 percent bridge (e.g., Tommy Hilfiger), 37 percent mid-tier (e.g., Gap), 19 percent value (e.g., H&M), and 6 percent discount (e.g., Walmart).16 Most brands in these segments make some use of supply-side design services.

Figure 2: Retail Brand Segmentation in Fieldwork.

Access and observations

As an intern or management trainee I was granted unprecedented ethnographic access. This included full permissions to witness and interrogate all design, marketing, product management, and assembly line processes through ethnographic interviews. Participants understood that I had a local educational affiliation (shared by many employees) and that I was there to learn about organizational routines. An ID card, company lanyard, biometric fingerprint access, habitual presence (four or five days per week), and sequential introductions all helped to establish a common sense of purpose and belonging. From a larger project spanning eleven months, I dedicated a minimum of two hundred hours to design, returning regularly to interpolate questions and findings from other units. My access as a silent observer extended to dozens of internal and external meetings covering design, product management, and corporate social responsibility. The evidence below focuses on buyer presentations as situationally bounded interaction rituals.

Interviews

Ethnographic interviews included a minimum of three hours with each participant. The goal was to understand decision-making practices in situ (Spradley [1979] 2016; Schmidt 2022). Participants included staff in design (n = 17), product management (n = 38), and marketing (n = 6). Many participants were interviewed multiple times. At the end of my fieldwork I conducted twenty-one semi-structured interviews in India. Most took place in offices, lasted about ninety minutes, and were audio recorded. I conducted an additional sixteen semi-structured interviews with designers, buyers, sourcing agents, and others in the U.S., especially in New York. Interview questions focused on organizational routines, buyer-supplier interactions, and perspectives on strategy and value. I typically opened interviews with prompts generated through observation and ethnographic interviews. Participants are listed in Table 1.

Table 1: Participants Associated with Buyer Presentations.

Ethnographic interviews Semi-structured interviews
Supply-side design 17 4
Marketing 6 5
Product management 38
Supply-side sourcing, buying, CSR 8
Buyer design and sourcing 16
Total 61 33

Analytic approach

Rather than taking any single guide to grounded theory or abductive analysis as authoritative, I concentrated on techniques including focused observation, jottings, constant comparison, and analytical memos (Timmermans and Tavory 2012; Walsh et al. 2015). After a typical day of observations (three to five hours), I returned to my cubicle or the design studio to write fieldnotes. Coding was initially divided according to the structures, routines, and rituals explained to me by participants (Becker 1982). After further observation and interviews, I used an iterative and abductive approach to theoretical comparison both within and after leaving the field. Inspired by the framework of interaction ritual chains, I learned to search for variations in emotional and phenomenological intensity over time. In my next round of coding, I concentrated on “preproduction” interactions in design and marketing. These entail a high degree of uncertainty and can be placed within the “creative development phase” of interaction ritual chains (Furnari and Rolbina 2018, 33–35). I finally returned to my fieldnotes to locate literal examples of precontractual coordination. The rituals below are magnifications of patterns that we can also expect to see further along in the production cycle, with uncertainty diminishing as one approaches the technical core of assembly lines.17

The Work of Fashion Design in the Semi-Periphery

The data that I present are temporally linear, following the staging and sequencing of buyer presentations. However, emotional energy can be modeled with an inverted-U shape over five phases, peaking during the third phase of buyer presentations. (1) In phase 1, I identify some of the arrangements and preferences for buyer and supplier travel. (2) When preparing for buyer presentations, suppliers build up a focus of attention and anticipate a shared mood. (3) The peak of emotional intensity is visible with the copresent identification and creation of trends. This includes the generation of cultural capital (in the interaction ritual sense of building membership symbols).18 (4) We then see a slow decline, sustained through relational work, before (5) witnessing the analytical contrast of weaker situations and dissipation. The sweep of data shows not only that interaction rituals have the potential to produce novelty from the semi-periphery. It shows what anticipation and exchange look like and feel like in empirically grounded situations.

Buyer and supplier travel

The depth of buyer-supplier coordination varies according to institutional context, sourcing budgets, and brand strategy (Carlsson 2017), but most buyer presentations are copresent occasions. Emotional involvement is heightened when bodies share a limited space (Collins 2004, 53–64; DiMaggio et al. 2019, 83–86). ACE conducts a total of sixty to eighty buyer presentations per year (including about twenty foreign trips to brand headquarters or a liaison agency in Hong Kong) and MEI conducts upward of two hundred yearly meetings (including about fifty foreign trips).19 The design director at ACE, Amrita, admits that she doesn’t like traveling so often, especially because of long flight times. However, almost immediately—and despite our backstage context—she catches herself before embracing downward emotional momentum. She straightens up in her chair and regains her emotional energy: “But I never say no to [the owner]. Every time he asks, I will go.” She earns respect throughout the company for doing so. “We get more than enough ideas and direction from ma’am,” assistant designer Lakshit says of her trips. “Ma’am travels around the world (circles his fingers) and she will make us ready.”

Some large brands invite multiple suppliers to “design briefs,” which Amrita explains as essentially a mood board of inspirational images delivered as a live presentation. (Trend forecasts in Western fashion capitals have a similar format.) A value-segment brand holds these in India every two months; buyers bring their own retail samples and they “do the talking.” A smaller bridge brand also hosts design briefs twice a year in India. Amrita loves these opportunities because copresence adds channel-rich information. “It’s so focused,” she says sharply. Because supply-side designers can ask questions and “get a clearer idea about what the client wants,” they can “catch on quickly,” reducing a critically important development timeline.

When executives and designers depart MEI to visit a value-oriented client, they bring four suitcases full of design samples. A division product manager says of European presentations that “we go, we keep showing them stuff. … The biggest reason to travel is to build a rapport, of the [brand] designer with our people.” Marketing managers must accompany supply-side designers, she feels, because “the managers have to take care of the marketing questions as well. It’s very important for us to work on product development with them … to gain more business with them” that is supported by expertise in sales development and factory planning (e.g., what order sizes are possible). Meetings generally last around five hours from start to finish, ending with low-energy negotiations about cost.

The buyers I was able to question during backstage interactions spend about two weeks per season (a total of four to eight trips per year) traveling to suppliers across South and East Asia, with one or two buyer presentations per day. Visits to strategic suppliers with key capabilities or a high percentage of orders are mandatory; visits to smaller or less capable factories are discretionary. According to the director of sourcing at an accessible luxury brand whom I spoke with during a factory tour, going to factories is especially important for witnessing the “culture of production.” “Even in today’s digital age, this is something you cannot access online,” she believes. Visits provide opportunities to gain tacit knowledge on both sides. A brand team of five or six20 often includes a buyer and designer accompanied by a lead buying agent and a few assistant buying agents. The same designers and buyers come to India each time, when possible, to develop relationships of “professional intimacy” (Jackall 1988, 51).

Creating a focus of attention

While many researchers argue that suppliers are mostly interchangeable (Aspers 2010; Collins 2001, 182; Uzzi 1996, 680), there are meaningful strategic differences behind this economic abstraction. In fact, just as customers know brands for their status and aesthetic profiles, buyers know regions and suppliers for their capabilities. ACE is smaller than MEI, with thirty-nine brand relationships compared to seventy-eight, but it is also more respected because of its focus/niche positioning (Porter 1980, 34–46) and its charismatic design director. As we prepare for a buyer presentation, Amrita tells me about a garment she previously designed for a bridge segment brand. After it hit stores, four competing buyers came to the showroom with this garment in hand to ask if ACE could make a version for them. While I initially thought this was an extraordinary example of global trend circulation, U.S. buyers whom I spoke to confirmed similar expectations of generative novelty and provided similar offhand examples of sourcing knowledge, down to the level of specific mills for a style of lace (see also Porac et al. 1989; Khaire 2011).

Setting up the showroom involves relatively limited interaction, but like preparation for a party or a romantic date, emotions are heightened by the team-based anticipation of copresence (Grazian 2007; Campos-Castillo and Hitlin 2013; Tavory 2018). As the theory of interaction ritual chains predicts, successful rituals are based on a shared mood and a mutual focus of attention. To achieve a shared mood, suppliers begin with trend forecasts, mood boards of inspirational images, brand websites, and competing brand aesthetics, building up a stock of cultural capital to design a collection of prototypes for each brand. Suppliers overproduce: ACE designers show about three hundred garment and textile samples at each buyer presentation. According to Amrita, about one-third of the prototypes are developed with a single upcoming brand in mind. The other two-thirds feature designs developed for other clients in similar market niches, some of which have already been selected and will thus be “tweaked” to avoid intellectual property infringements. As part of my participant observation, I try my hand at preselections for two buyer-oriented themes that we will call “Desert Red” and “Razzle Dazzle.” Amrita, not surprisingly, has more advanced tacit knowledge about what these themes call for. She adds a navy piece with red tassels—I had ignored the accent color. She adds a small fabric swatch with embroidery, seeing inspiration where I saw an unfinished product. For Razzle Dazzle she adds a piece with strong geometric designs, though it is only black and white, “to add more mood.” As I reflected on my shortcomings, I realized not only that moods are hard to categorize, but also that designers have an occupational mandate to constantly push the boundaries of categories anyway (Fayard et al. 2016). Designers have to anticipate changing consumer tastes.

Designers anticipate a mutual focus of attention by privileging recency and by reducing the visual scope of choice. Recency is conceptually essential for the fashion dynamics of apparel (Blumer 1969).21 Assistant designer Vani tells me that “whatever is the latest will go right in front,” leaving the first garment rack empty. “Ma’am [Amrita] has a great sense of that, what’s going on the international markets, so she will arrange that” when she arrives later. As we continue placing garments, she tells me that “we are trying to create what the [buyer] wants, just to get their attention.” I am surprised that unlike in mood boards, retail merchandising, magazine photoshoots, or fashion shows, there are no accessories like handbags or jewelry. Supply-side designers instead seek to highlight the material qualities of the prototypes—embroidery, fabric, technical properties. “I would rather represent my garment and stay focused,” Amrita later says. At other sites or in the future, more intensive showroom merchandising may be an option for further supplier upgrading.

Suppliers also achieve focus by the micro-material practice of thinning (an elementary version of curating). Because of the overproduction of samples, there are multiple rounds of thinning. When undertaken by suppliers, this represents a relatively new value-added service. Even a few years back at MEI, a senior designer tells me, showrooms were typically set up to broadcast the scope of product capabilities. This sometimes meant that summer shorts and winter jackets would be set up in the same room. (A small supplier I visited still has a dusty padlocked showroom organized in this way; see below.) Now the setup is more responsive. A designer evaluates it as more “buyer-oriented, [toward] what the buyer will like.” Garment racks organized by moods function the way that picture frames do for art (Simmel [1906] 1968): they legitimate aesthetic material by isolating the perceptual foreground.

Assistant designers take the first cuts, followed by a senior designer or the design director. Brand buyers and designers will make further cuts during selections at buyer presentations and again at the brand headquarters. When Amrita enters the showroom for her round of thinning, her first evaluative word is highly evocative: “claustrophobic.” She continues: “Let’s reduce the congestion. … We still need to shortlist. … What needs to be removed?” Where there were forty-five garments on each rack before our arrival, now there are just seventeen. Some hang from the scoop necks of other garments, enlivening the presentation by directing attention to different visual planes.

After an hour into the work of thinning with her assistant designer, Amrita drops her upbeat attitude for a few minutes. This is a noticeably long interval for her. “Please give us your feedback,” she pleads with me, “because we are exhausted.” Later, when at long last the curation appears to be finished, the emotional rhythm picks up again. Immediately before the buyer arrives Amrita moves a dress from one rack to another: “’Til anyone comes I can’t sit still, I have to do something!” The elaborate staging and sequencing process, laden with emotions, continues to escalate toward the peak of buyer selections.

Buyer presentations

Identifying trends

Brand designers never ask about cost first. Instead, it is only their initial aesthetic reactions that provoke requests for further information of a comparative or technical nature. According to Amrita, “most buyers make clothing decisions the same way you do when you go into a store (pointing): ‘that’s fashionable’ or ‘that’s not.’” Buyers either do a full scan before a second and third round with closer inspection, or they begin with simple verbal evaluations. “Pretty … very pretty … fabulous …” a brand designer remarks as he hands selections to his Indian buying agent. Buyers will eventually select an average of fifty prototypes from approximately three hundred options.22 Selections are not random and are not evenly distributed. Instead, they follow the ritual ingredients of shared mood and a mutual focus of attention. These ingredients can be indexed by the spatial order of garment racks. Recall that supply-side designers privilege recency, with the first two or three garment racks exclusively designed for particular brands. The fact that buyers select most of their prototypes from the first two or three racks provides evidence that the anticipatory work of suppliers is effective.

As buyers move deeper into selections, they are more likely to ask questions about prototypes that have actually been developed for competing brands. Of course, buyers are aware that other brands are sourcing from a similar set of suppliers (Hoppe 2019). Still, attentive buyer questions can yield special comparative information. “Have you done this for anyone?” a buyer might ask as she holds up a prototype. “Yes, this is a development we’ve done for [a competitor]. They’re saying it is doing very well for them,” Amrita might answer. Buyers can thus gain recent knowledge about product-level competitor selections, and sometimes even early sales performance (through test runs and re-orders). Suppliers, meanwhile, build cultural capital that can be leveraged in future resource exchanges (Krishnan et al. 2020). For both sides, establishing trust in an uncertain market is an achievement. It is a victory of phenomenological solidarity.

Selections and modifications are the zenith of buyer presentations as interaction rituals. Supplier staff relish positive exchanges, reminding each other of how the “buyer was so excited, she was jumping like a child! She wanted to buy everything!” At a MEI design presentation with a relatively new client, senior designer Rahul and the buyers zoom in on a pair of camouflage pants. “Right now everybody is asking for camo,” Rahul divulges. Later he holds up another pair with a thicker camouflage print that has been picked up by a brand competitor. Cathy, a U.S. buyer, responds, “the French are wearing this, huh?” and laughs. Minutes later, continuing to browse the collection, Cathy is still clearly thinking about the pattern. “In the U.S. camo is always there, but Europe has resisted it …” Rahul, in his calm and collected way, informs her that “another buyer was here just five days back …” when Cathy fills in his sentence—“and they were asking for it.” Rahul nods.23 One can almost see Cathy shifting away from her old opinions, subtly guided by new situational intelligence. Here we can see how getting hooked into an interaction ritual creates the opportunity to force new symbols into a limited attention space.

Relational work

Interaction rituals can be strategically managed by actors within a given situation. Emotional labor, for example, can delay the dissipation of emotional energy.24 Subtle examples of emotional labor involve perceptual or emotional avoidance, which can be interpreted as a feminized form of conflict. Some buyers require more emotional labor than others. Based on a previous encounter in New York, Amrita describes brand designer Mick as “irritating,” “hard to work with,” and “very fussy” about certain styles. She feels he does not contribute much to interactions but is instead “cold” and “largely unresponsive.” Indeed, after some strained small talk when he arrives, Mick sets the tone when he stops talking and turns his body away to face the garment racks. Watching closely, I can see Amrita purse her lips to effortfully contain her usually colorful chatter. She is worried that she might ask Mick too many questions or “say something offensive.” This is textbook emotional labor.25

Buyers, for their part, generally maintain civil inattention in the face of prototypes that are unattractive or boring. After a buyer and designer happily recognize garments that Amrita designed two years ago for another brand within the same parent company, the buyers quickly pass on to new designs.26 If, and only if, colleagues from their own “team” are present, buyers sometimes offer passing critiques: a peasant top is “too peasant,” a loose-fitting garment needs to be “more structured.” Again, however, the preferred method of conflict is avoidance. Politeness ensures the ethnomethodological baseline of a slightly positive mood.

While designers are incentivized to anticipate general aesthetic preferences that align with trend forecasts, they also need to create differentiated products that grab the attention of buyers within a temporary situation. We can continue with the example from Mick, whose third rack of choices is filled with white garments. Amrita “knows” that white is “big this season.” This knowledge is based on forecasts, mood board requests, and recent buyer demand, suggesting an analytical story about cognition and information sharing. Indeed, white does end up as the number one color to open designer runways a few months later (Luther 2015). However, the cognitive story is incomplete. For one thing, emotions help to define attention in the first place (Bandelj 2009). For another, the sensual and material aspects of encounters can transform taste within a given situation (Entwistle 2006, 713–14). Still further, supplier staff do relational work. When necessary, they deflect criticism and offer creative suggestions to maintain emotional energy.

Interaction ritual chains offer a model of how these dynamics can fit together. In Mick’s case, although he selects heavily from the rack of whites, he experiences a “mundane emotional metamorphoses” (Katz 1999) from taciturn reflexivity toward external engagement. I can hear the tone of disappointment in his voice: “When I first started this trip, I loved how much white I was seeing, but now, you know, I’ve seen so much that I’m tired of it. Now it’s boring.” Amrita absorbs this criticism and immediately empathizes with him. She relates that when she herself put on a white shirt this morning, she added an off-white lace vest “to change it up.” This subtle response shows how Amrita adopts a shared emotional stance with Mick in an attempt to build solidarity. But the color white, as a Durkheimian totem, is losing its seasonal energetic charge and thus its value as cultural capital. As a semi-peripheral designer who is working three months ahead of market impact, Amrita is already showing an early and elevated sensitivity to the trend curve. Even in situations where relational work does not generate emotional energy that is strong enough to create a radical new aesthetic, it can still prolong interactions and prevent drift. After the emotional peak of buyer selections, the component-driven power of interaction ritual chains diminishes.

Dissipation of emotional energy

Some interactions are more successful than others, generating variable levels of emotional energy that can be invested in symbolic value creation.27 The highest profile successes show that emotional energy is a long-term product generated by interaction ritual chains. One day at lunch, I ask the group about a visit from an A-list female celebrity who owns a “designer” fashion collection.28 Amrita jokes with a senior product manager that when he “gave [the celebrity] a tour, he was sweating the whole time!” She turns to Vani next: “And [the celebrity] came with [her celebrity husband]. When Vani saw him, she fainted!” Vani blushes furiously and there is tremendous laughter and slapping of shoulders. Although this visit took place several years ago, the infusion of emotional energy remains palpable. In another case that I witnessed, Amita reflects on gaining a new client after the buyers leave: “I have been putting my whole energies into this. This is only our second meeting, but now I feel secure. She has given me fifty styles!” Vani has immediately set to work on labeling and photographing the selections and says she is excited to develop them “first thing” the next morning.

By contrast, on the drive back from another buyer presentation, I ask Amrita and Vani how they feel the presentation went. Amrita, in a tired backstage voice, says “It was ok. He was more open [than in our first meeting in New York], maybe because he was in India. At the [New York] office he was very tight (she tenses up her body and fist as I turn around to look). But [this brand] … the account doesn’t give me any pleasure.” In my design research the next day, I see animal prints and ask Vani about them. “Apart from [this brand] …” she says, “nobody else likes them. Personally I think they look gross and nobody in India would ever wear them.” Later, when evaluating one of Vani’s prototypes, Amrita muses, “this is getting a little closer to what we want. I don’t know what he wants …” Following a merely “ok” interaction, Vani and Amrita both experience “designer’s block.” They lack initiative. They lack emotional energy. Amrita ends up merely “satisfied” with the final designs.

We can also see variations in emotional energy by contrasting buyer presentations with different situations and earlier or later phases of rituals. I identify a decline in emotional energy in the second half of a MEI buyer presentation by observing the spatial and temporal dispersion among participants within the showroom. Predictably, “individuals and little subgroups drift … away until those who are left are caught up in a deflationary emotion, like rats leaving a sinking ship” (Collins 2004, 51). Although the group remains physically copresent, the focus of attention has fractured. In the middle of the showroom, a fabric technician asks Rahul about performance fabric finishes. At a side table, the lead buying agent from a brand educates a MEI executive about technological expectations. In the corner, a buying team with three Chinese speakers withdraws into its own discussion.

I observe other indications of diminished emotional energy as we approach the technical core of assembly. For example, I see that buyer’s faces often glaze over during factory tours. Most have been on dozens or even hundreds of such visits, and they see technical infrastructure as a routinized system that does not deserve special attention. Nor do factory managers participate in buyer presentations. They instead communicate with less important brand representatives in less hierarchical “meetings” that bracket out symbolic uncertainties and instead focus on measurable, utilitarian parameters. Likewise, product managers are rarely worried about meetings with local Indian buying agents, and unscheduled drop-ins do not seem to cause issues. In these meetings postures are more relaxed and there are more questions about personal lives.

Not all buyer presentations are full of emotional energy, either. The padlocked showroom of a small supplier that I mentioned above is full of garments, but it is dark and musty. The general manager of merchandising and an assistant designer are both surprised that I want to see it. In contrast to the demand for recency at ACE, the assistant designer at the small supplier thinks some garments have been stored in the showroom for longer than her three-year tenure. Another example comes from virtual buyer presentations that involve a limited exchange of trend forecasts, mood boards, and pictures through PowerPoint. Written buyer feedback is curt: “No novelty waistband, just turn back the elastic waist.” Or “last year’s color, no lab dib [color test] needed. Change embroidery.” Selected prototypes are then air-mailed or assessed by local buying agents. Again, while researchers in other contexts have demonstrated the possibility of virtual interaction rituals in financial markets, intranet discussion forums, and software programming (Knorr Cetina and Bruegger 2002; Metiu and Rothbard 2013; DiMaggio et al. 2019), these kinds of exchanges appear to be low-energy occasions in the leisure worlds of fashion, art, and sport (see also Godart and Mears 2009; Darr and Mears 2017; Buchholz et al. 2020).

The work of Rituraj, an industrial engineer at MEI, represents the limit of upgrading in conventional accounts of upgrading into design. Excluded from the colorful and spacious design office, he is stuck in a gray cubicle and restricted to a smaller set of colleagues. Rituraj spends most of his time on cost engineering for prototypes that have already been selected. However, he does show me images from rather stark virtual presentations and talks about their technical development trajectories. He highlights a garment with a red hem: “This one, we have sent the same, two to three years back. We have to send fifteen designs per season, minimum … so sometimes we can do like that.” Rituraj’s recycling of designs is a clear devaluation of recency premiums, and it is much more common in virtual interactions compared to showroom presentations. Similar dynamics of relative alienation are evident in the work of assistant designers at the smaller suppliers I visited; one indication is higher job turnover. And while there is some information sharing happening in these cases—many suppliers have the same access to trend forecasting services—virtual presentations ultimately represent a low-cost strategy for brands. Virtual exchanges lack opportunities for the more powerful copresent exchanges of tacit knowledge and emotion. Brands are rewarded with sensibly minimal emotional investment from relatively isolated staff who produce predictably weak symbolic outcomes.

Discussion: Infrastructures of Novelty

Interaction rituals help us to understand how it is possible to generate novelty from the semi-periphery. While the full theory offers a radical explanation for macrostructures, a partial application here—nested within the opportunity structures of a demand-driven political economy—does not exclude other mechanisms, explanations, or conditions of possibility. Rather, it complements structural theories by enabling discovery on methodological terms. Rituals themselves have varying degrees of success. Attending to combinations of ingredients allows us to explain when and how29 interaction rituals will succeed in producing generative novelty. At the situational level, successful rituals are built by a combination of copresence, a mutual focus of attention, and a shared mood (constructed in part through emotional labor). Analyzing these dynamics makes it possible to see how important intimate emotional responses are for transnational coordination. Successful creations can then be diffused through the larger infrastructure of GVCs. Below I consider complementarities with theories of GVCs, social action, political economy, and global fields.

Interaction rituals as the microfoundation of GVCs

Turning to interaction ritual chains allows us to observe variations in the dynamics of interactions that underpin abstract structural theories and their associated mechanisms. A clear example is the reliance on organizational learning as a concept in GVCs (e.g., Gereffi 1999), while the actual practices of work and interaction are routinely glossed as firm-level outcomes.30 Organizational learning must be able to account for the construction of Durkheimian codes and totems. It is exactly here that a set of rich microfoundations can both reveal analytical dynamism and create a more rigorous emotional foundation for the abstractions of “resources,” “costs,” and “exchanges” (Collins 1993). Trust, for example, “is most relevant in situations when uncertainty is high,” Schilke and coauthors write (2021, 246), “and it is in exactly those situations that trust is most difficult to produce.” Interaction ritual theory is prepared to explain situational possibilities by specifically understanding trust as the solidaristic outcome of successful rituals. In the case of our buyer presentations above, we can see how every signal of selective attention and positive emotion creates feedback loops for future designs. Competitive, charged-up exchanges propel dynamic conformity among brands, partially explaining seasonal trends across an increasingly global system of fashion.

Interaction rituals can similarly add precision that is compatible with network explanations of action (e.g., Collins 1998; Collins and Guillén 2012). One example, described in detail by Parker and Hackett (2012), is the exchange of emotional energy during scientific collaborations on a remote Swedish island. Other examples may not explicitly name interaction rituals but nevertheless describe or strongly suggest their operation in practice. For example, reading into Erikson and Bearman (2006), we learn that the expanded global trade structure of the East India Company emerged through the unintended consequence of unsanctioned private trading by ship captains—high on emotional energy—who were seeking new ports. Other network case studies can be similarly rich in describing emotional tensions and their associated strategic responses (e.g., Padgett and Ansell 1993; Cattani et al. 2017). Also in line with my ethnographic findings is the argument put forth by Powell et al. (1996) that networks of innovation can improve the practices of collaboration itself. Future research might take inspiration from Simmel’s insights on emotions and networks to develop a fully fledged geometry of interaction rituals.31

One internal critique of interaction ritual theory concerns its Nietzschean tendency to identify power and dominance as focal behavioral outcomes. Collins himself is not unaware of this32 but tends to conceive of “action” along its most visible lines, which happen to attain visibility through what some feminists describe as the patriarchal epistemological environment of action theory (e.g., Blumberg 1989; Hoang 2022). A feminist perspective would instead repeatedly attend to the energetic demands of deference, reproduction, aesthetics, and the like (Summers-Effler 2010; Williams and Connell 2010; Lareau 2022). We need to look not just at the high-status actors who appropriate emotional energy but also at those who contribute to its production (see also Contreras 2019). The theory of interaction ritual chains gives us the methodological tools to do this, so long as these tools are actively deployed against larger political problems of recognition. The strength of interaction rituals as microfoundations for GVCs will be improved by incorporating a wide range of scholarship on emotions, learning, collaboration, and critique.

The political economy of research on upgrading

The labor process that I observed appears similar to what other design scholars have observed in core locations, even if quality is difficult to assess (cf. Aspers 2010; Bucher and Langley 2016; Stigliani and Ravasi 2018; Benzecry 2022). Supply-side designers, like brand designers, are attuned to trend forecasts, customer preferences, and their artistic intuitions. Aided by the “support personnel” of buyers, marketing managers, and product developers, designers everywhere collaborate to produce generative novelty.33 In my view, in broader literatures on innovation it is too easy to separate “product development” from “design” (Cohen and Levinthal 1990, 134; O’Reilly and Tushman 2008, 200) and thus to write off design from the semi-periphery as “exploitation,” “reverse engineering,” or “imitation,” rather than as exploration, innovation, or research and development (cf. Kim 1997, 14; Abrami et al. 2014). While functional differences are likely to remain, we should always be careful to ensure, first, that analytical divisions do not become overly rigid (cf. Levitt 1966; March 1991), and second, that when labels are assigned, they are behaviorally substantiated and not categorically assumed.34 We cannot infer from studies of Western fashion capitals that these are the only places where the work of fashion design does or could take place.

With all of this said, we do await large-scale quantitative studies on the offshoring of design. This is a major limitation of this study. Many of us are aware of the “practical difficulties of collecting reliable data on the creation and capture of value” in general, and from semi-peripheral economies in particular (Tokatli 2013, 996n1). We know that industrial classifications are poor indicators of production processes. Patent and customs data are overrepresented, especially in international business research, because they are relatively easy to track. Even further, because the measurement of services is assumed to be geographically sticky, collecting it remains a low priority for international statistical agencies (Sturgeon and Gereffi 2009; Dindial et al. 2020). Fortunately, the question of how to more accurately capture supplier activities and business functions within GVCs is an active line of research (Sinkovics et al. 2018; Sturgeon 2019). I hope that qualitative descriptions of upgrading will stimulate future measurements of probability.

Accounting for differences among industries within GVCs also remains a challenge that is widely acknowledged and cannot be overcome here. In apparel, at least, we are in a “discovery” stage of identifying novelty from the semi-periphery. As we zoom out, larger indicators and mechanisms suggest that upgrading is increasingly widespread. The share of GVC income for textiles and apparel is rising across Asia (De Backer and Miroudot 2021, 252–53). As part of a longer historical-comparative trajectory (e.g., Hamilton et al. 2011), Asian value capture seems to be fueled by the growth of giant transnational contractors (Appelbaum 2008; Azmeh and Nadvi 2014; Gereffi 2014; Dallas 2015; Shin 2019). Among them we are seeing notable advances in positioning, capacities, and routines that are changing the face of bargaining power and maybe even collective organizing as well (Sako and Zylberberg 2017; Sinkovics et al. 2018; Amengual and Bartley 2022; Shin 2023). Further afield, world-system changes are also worthy of exploration, especially if they can be put into conversation with a thicker political economy of culture.

New directions from global field theory?

Global field theory is a final topic for discussion that might enable scholars to assess and predict comparative aesthetic contributions from the core, semi-periphery, and periphery. It certainly has the advantage of treating geography on a status continuum. Some questions for future research include what the parameters of the fashion field are, and how these should then be theorized between supply and demand, production and consumption (Sombart [1913] 1967; Aspers and Godart 2013). Recent scholarship has suggested that the core of the fashion field is marked by the consumption and media patterns associated with luxury branding (Godart 2014; Kuipers et al. 2023). This may help to explain why applications of field theory have thus far strongly favored the Global Northwest (e.g., Entwistle 2009; Mears 2011). In response, Tokatli (2015) has raised concerns about the centrality of discourse in field theory, including the potential for critics and journalists to reproduce misleading brand narratives.35 A future global field theory of fashion will be improved by connecting the Western core of luxury to the other 94 percent of world industry revenue (Statista 2025).

In Buchholz’s (2022) excellent coverage of the semi-periphery in the field of art, one major finding concerns heteronomy (commercialism). In the field of fashion, dedicated investigations of semi-peripheral countries and cities have used a variety of theories and discovered similar results. Both Hoppe (2020) and Kuipers et al. (2022) find that while “second city” fashion weeks aspire to fashion capital standards, resource constraints inhibit high production values. The result is a reputation for commercial and “derivative” cultural production that reproduces a cycle of imperfect imitation. Further support for the thesis of semi-peripheral commercialism can be found in Mears (2012) on Japan, Lantz (2016, 47, 103) and Skov (2002) on China, and Rantisi (2010, 109) on Canada. One final point that could similarly be cast within a field perspective is the repeated finding that individual creators in semi-peripheral cities sometimes enjoy being a bigger fish in a smaller pond (Hoppe 2019; Kuipers et al. 2022).36

Peripheral locations in fashion production have so far mostly been examined with a functional economic lens of development or exploitation. Given the distance between industry and field analyses (cf. Buchholz 2018, 20), this suggests that global field theory would benefit from dialogue with the sociology of development. Two important topics for global peripheries are cluster development and entrepreneurial capabilities. First, while cluster development has been a common policy goal, there are concerns about its efficacy for peripheral latecomers. Whitfield and Staritz (2021) identify a series of systematic issues: high learning costs and risks; low profits without scale, scope, or brand support; and infrastructure and policy challenges. Second, while scholars have identified some scope for entrepreneurial maneuvering in the periphery—absorptive capacity and supplier strategy are examples here (Sinkovics et al. 2018)—a review of forty-four studies in GVCs, international business, and economic geography finds that functional upgrading is rare among disadvantaged peripheral suppliers (Choksy et al. 2017). Dewey’s ethnographic study of an informal market in Argentina (2020) supports this finding by showing how and why entrepreneurial ambitions often remain unfulfilled in a social context marked by low trust.

One final question relevant to field theory may be the extent to which upgrading at ACE and MEI is attributable to the charisma of individual figures like Amrita or Rahul. If they were less skilled, or removed from their positions, would interaction rituals in the same settings still yield positive results? This counterfactual is difficult to answer and suggests a number of possibilities. Conventional skepticism suggests a negative answer. For example, Godart et al. (2015) have found that while executives at high-end brands do gain creativity from foreign professional experience, fashion capitals maintain a largely separate star system that continues to dominate the field of fashion (see also Godart et al. 2014; Godart 2015). Alternatively, moderate success without reference to individuals is also possible. Brands control intellectual property rights but they do not control the flows of tacit knowledge (Hoppe 2019). Nor did previous restrictions on intellectual property transfers stop industrial knowledge transfers from England to the U.S. (Stinchcombe [1965] 1986, 199; Rivoli 2005, 77–78). We can also reconsider the meaning of traits like genius or charisma as Durkheimian social products. A charismatic leader is one who orchestrates, synthesizes, and appropriates the emotional energy of a situation. There is always a possibility that socially skilled actors will arise as replacements, or that they will seek to transform the dynamics of competition and the shape of fields altogether (Fligstein 2001, 117–18; Cappelli et al. 2010). Such developments should be closely monitored.

Conclusion

In this paper, I have been concerned with the general problem of novelty from the semi-periphery, the mid-range problem of upgrading within GVCs, and the specific problem of upgrading into design. I have operationalized fashion design as a case of generative novelty and a form of value creation that is dependent on tacit knowledge. While on the one hand many previous theories in management and the social sciences have identified good theoretical reasons for skepticism, on the other hand scholars of networks, GVCs, and global field theory have created theoretical possibilities that can help to explain new empirical realities. I have argued that interaction ritual chains offer an enabling practical mechanism for offshoring and that these rituals are possible outside of fashion capitals—at least to a semi-peripheral extent. Semi-peripheral designers can rely on interactions to build cultural capital that creates novelty, yielding products that are demonstrably sought after by Western brands across most of the brand status hierarchy. While the contributions of suppliers remain largely invisible to customers insofar as they are appropriated by brands, the magic of design is no longer restricted to the Western fashion capitals of New York, Paris, London, and Milan.

Notes

  1. I have had the great privilege of apprenticing with Randall Collins. Along with Gil Eyal and two phenomenal reviewers for this journal, I also thank Jens Beckert, Claudio Benzecry, Roisin Cronin, Lindsay Glassman, Mauro Guillén, Kimberly Kay Hoang, Robin Leidner, Rhacel Parreñas, and Franziska Wiest. Versions of the paper were presented at the following events: annual meetings of the Academy of Management and American Sociological Association; the Chicago Ethnography Conference; the Chicago Ethnography Incubator; the Conference on Global Production; the Distance in Organizations Conference; the Economic Sociology Workshop at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies; the Global Strategy and Emerging Markets Conference; and the Journal of Management Studies Publishing Workshop. Financial support was provided by the Kohli Foundation for Sociology, a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research Fellowship, the Center for the Advanced Study of India, and a Gertrude and Otto Pollak Summer Research Fellowship. ⮭
  2. There is some debate among scholars of international business, labor relations, and the sociology of development about the scope or centrality of specific criteria (cf. Rossi 2013; Dindial et al. 2020). ⮭
  3. Global field theorists would call this “macro-capital” (Buchholz 2018). ⮭
  4. This search for microfoundations is motivated by comments from Adler (2001), DiMaggio (2002), and Schilke et al. (2017). ⮭
  5. An ongoing critical literature review from 1950 to 2020 finds seventy-two publications, all specifically supported by examples from textiles and apparel, that offer a skeptical theory of location vis a vis cultural production. Explicit skepticism peaks in the 2000s but strong legacies persist. Well-known theories and paradigms include the product cycle, post-industrial societies, the new international division of labor, world-systems analysis, the global city, industrial districts, competitive clusters, GVCs, field theory, and creative cities. ⮭
  6. The phrase pops up after passages about the related benefits of understanding local laws, as well as the visibility and authority of local control (Smith [1776] 1976, 386–405). Similar discussions can be found in Babbage ([1835] 1963, 219–24), Collins and Quark (2006), Broughton (2015), and Zhou (2010). ⮭
  7. Krugman uses examples of textile production in the Carolinas and Georgia, and shoe production in Massachusetts (1991a, 54–63). Similarly, Kanter (1995, 122), commenting on the textile industry in South Carolina, cites a “hospitable business climate and a positive work ethic.” There is no mention of anti-union organizing or the long history of racial exploitation (compare Lescaze 2004). ⮭
  8. Tewari (2006, 2008, 2010) provides good discussions of the impact of trade, development, and labor policies in India. This national context also includes discussions of sweatshops (Barrientos et al. 2010; Mezzadri 2016), craft traditions (Khaire 2011), and institutionally informed entrepreneurship (Cappelli et al. 2010). For competing Asian-oriented comparative institutionalist perspectives, see especially the works of Hamilton and Shin (Hamilton and Biggart 1988; Hamilton and Shin 2015; Shin 2019). ⮭
  9. Most theoretical paradigms in management characterize design, research, and development as high-value services. The prized location of these services on the “smile curve” of value creation is a well-known example (Mudambi 2008). Value capture and rhetorical geography are different issues (cf. Hopkins and Wallerstein 1994, 18; Dindial et al. 2020; Hoppe and Nedzhvetskaya 2023). ⮭
  10. One further example is the practice of brands actively blocking supplier upgrading. This is apparent in apparel research, as well as in studies of other fragmented industries like electronics (see Humphrey and Schmitz 2002; Alcácer and Oxley 2014). ⮭
  11. Italy is a widely cited example of a common culture (but see Whitford 2001). While Uzzi documents both relational and arm’s-length ties in the New York garment district, his research has been previously criticized for inattention to the political economy of outsourcing (e.g., Hamilton and Gereffi 2009). ⮭
  12. A detailed analysis of Gereffi’s position is a topic for another paper. A charitable reading is that his logic allows for it, with triangle manufacturing as the key mechanism for the gradual extension of production tasks (1994, 113–15). However, on balance I interpret Gereffi as a skeptic on the grounds of intellectual and strategic primacy (i.e., buyer-driven chains), practical analyses of the fashion industry, and repeated specific claims that exclude design from “full-package production” (e.g., Bair and Gereffi 2001, 1395; Fernandez-Stark et al. 2011, 7–11; Gereffi 2001, 4). ⮭
  13. Gereffi, Aspers, Tokatli, and J. Collins would all agree on this point. With other principal agendas in mind, they simply assign a theoretically residual place to creative action. Meanwhile, in management, most theories on learning, information sharing, and knowledge transfer are derived from information economics and the Carnegie tradition. This includes “learning from buyers,” “learning by supplying,” and “learning by monitoring,” as well as “absorptive capacity.” Core emphases on STEM contexts (e.g., measurable patent data), bounded rationality, and limited local search are not especially helpful for the problem of symbolic value creation at hand. For critical discussions, see Joas (1996), Beckert (2003), and Ravasi and Rindova (2012). ⮭
  14. All names are pseudonyms. The firm names here are associated with price and quality niches. ⮭
  15. Through interviews and direct observation, I identified fifteen first-tier suppliers in India that offer design services. At least eight buying agencies further report offering design services based in India. Indeed, if one begins with a network brokerage perspective, buying agencies are even more suitable for discovery. Although I initially obtained ethnographic access to an agency, it was later revoked because of concerns about confidentiality. ⮭
  16. The status hierarchy of brands does not necessarily correspond to the strategic priorities of suppliers, who must balance demands for legitimacy, steady orders, and more. High-end luxury brands are excluded because of a small sample size. U.S. and European interview data suggest their designs are more closely protected. ⮭
  17. This is a nod toward structural contingency theory, a classic organizational approach that influenced Hirsch (1972) and, in turn, the title and direction of this paper. ⮭
  18. Collins’s use of the concept is distinguished from Bourdieu and others by a complex argument dependent on a competing vision of economic history, institutions, and sociometry (the last of which is closer to Lewin). In short, it is more sensitive to social psychology and is better at explaining novelty. ⮭
  19. MEI meetings cover a wider range of topics (e.g., dedicated corporate social responsibility meetings). ⮭
  20. Team size is within the classic managerial span of control (a median of six), which seems to be a fundamental structural limit of interpersonal attention. In administration, see Gulick ([1937] 2003, 7–9) and Urwick (1956); on niche rivalry, see Porac et al. (1995); on Broadway collaborations, see Uzzi and Spiro (2005); on hosts at parties, see Riesman et al. (1960); in philosophy, see Collins (1998). ⮭
  21. As an emblem of modernity, recency is also essential in cultural fields like cuisine (Ferguson 1998, 611). Recency is likewise valued in the supposedly rational domain of management fashions (Abrahamson 1996; Jackall 1988, 141). ⮭
  22. This is about 17 percent. After further negotiations covering design, production timelines, and cost, ACE product managers estimate that 6–10 percent of buyer selections translate into purchase orders. ⮭
  23. Although scholars might alternatively emphasize Rahul’s brokerage position, I want to spotlight social psychology here. The dynamics of timing, sequencing, and attention are well-developed in microsociology and interaction ritual chains, and Wiley’s theorizing of internal conversations (1994) has been picked up by both Collins and Summers-Effler. Likewise, in the theory of group flow, “the quality of full attention facilitates this type of seamless coordination by optimizing each person’s understanding of the contributions that are being made and by allowing them to anticipate where the contributing member is going seconds in advance” (Lavoie et al. 2025, 506, italics added). Incidentally, military camouflage was invented by French artists inspired by cubism during WWI (Zerubavel 2015, 30–44). ⮭
  24. Emotional labor “requires one to induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others” (Hochschild 1983, 7). ⮭
  25. As Goffman said, “what is one man’s over-eagerness will become another’s alienation” (1967, 123). ⮭
  26. High-end firms similarly avoid trends that received media coverage in past seasons (Godart and Galunic 2019; Cillo et al. 2020). ⮭
  27. See also the related works of Ravasi and his coauthors (e.g., Dalpiaz et al. 2016). ⮭
  28. On celebrities as repositories of group attention, see Gamson (1994) and Collins (2004, 124, 279–91). ⮭
  29. The most radical (and deservedly contentious) explanation could even extend to the “what” of content (cf. Collins 1989; Hoppe 2022). ⮭
  30. For similar critiques of theories that gradually leave practices behind, see Barley (2017), Camic (1986), and Cohen (2007). ⮭
  31. A reviewer offers this excellent suggestion, with well-named concepts including “asymmetric rituals,” “truncated chains,” the “unequal conversion of emotional energy into symbolic capital,” and “ceiling effects on recognition.” See Summers-Effler and Van Ness (2019) and Turner (2019) for discussions. Other possibilities may be found in field theory, systems theory, the sociology of knowledge, or the integrated theory offered by Fuchs (2001). ⮭
  32. Parts of his chapter on women and status cultures read like The Feminine Mystique (cf. Collins 1992; Friedan [1963] 1997). ⮭
  33. Mora (2006) makes this point for design in Italy. On the distance among designers, buyers, and clients—e.g., customer images and buyer reflections—see also Entwistle (2006) and Schulz (2008) on fashion, or White (1981) on production markets more generally. We may also consider the degree to which attitudes and appropriations contribute to the mystified image of designers versus dressmakers, stylists, etc. (Trautman 1979; Steele 1992; Stokes 2015); gender scholars might recognize an analogous recognition gap with chefs versus cooks, art versus craft, or theory versus description (Ortner 1972, 19–20; Tuchman and Fortin 1984; Hoang 2022). ⮭
  34. Becker (1970) made this classical point on professions versus occupations. Koppman et al. (2016) provide a good case study model. In their study of information technology offshoring, they show how Indian workers are treated by their Western employers not as peers or competent professionals, but as a fungible and low-cost labor force that is not worthy of managerial attention. Employees are given assignments that do not allow for visible work contributions, evoking disappointment. Employers, for their part, show a perfunctory interest in employee identities or capabilities, spending perhaps a week in India before returning home. This economic social psychology is very similar to what I witnessed. ⮭
  35. See Hoppe and Nedzhvetskaya (2023) for supporting evidence. ⮭
  36. This finding might be additionally interpreted using a variety of competing theories. For ecological perspectives see Hannan and Freeman (1977) or especially Liu and Emirbayer (2016). Collins (2004) might point to weaker situational boundaries and a locally enhanced appropriation of emotional energy. This would be compatible with a “sour grapes” explanation. Kuipers et al. (2022) suggest the phenomenology of double consciousness as another option. In my reading, the existentialism that underpins at least The Souls of Black Folk (Du Bois [1903] 2003) is not a salient feature of other studies in semi-peripheral locations. Still, it remains an intriguing question for future research, postcolonial and otherwise. ⮭

Competing Interests

Funding was provided by a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research Fellowship, the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania, and two Gertrude and Otto Pollak Summer Research Fellowships. None of this should qualify as a competing interest.

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