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International Sociology Reviews 32(5)

urban policy of the last 30 years. Although scholars in the fields of urban sociology who
are interested in exploring the social dynamics of culturally led regeneration projects
might also find inspiring contributions. Finally, urban planners and architects might find
the polyphonic analysis of the case studies particularly useful for reflecting on the social
implication of urban regeneration projects.

Author biography
Federica De Molli is currently a doctoral researcher at the Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI),
and a teaching assistant at the University of Milan-Bicocca in Italy. Her research combines
approaches from organization studies, urban sociology, and aesthetics to analyze how the presence
of a cultural organization in urban settings affects relational and symbolic systems. Address:
Institute of Marketing and Communication Management (IMCA), Università della Svizzera
Italiana (USI), Via Buffi 13, 6904 Lugano, Switzerland. Email: federica.de.molli@usi.ch

Rajinder Dudrah, Elke Mader and Bernard Fuchs (eds),

SRK and Global Bollywood, Oxford University Press: New Delhi, 2015; 393 pp.: ISBN
9780199460472, £54.00

Reviewed by: Lakshmi Srinivas, University of Massachusetts-Boston, USA

Keywords
Bollywood, celebrity, globalization, India, Shah Rukh Khan

There are several anthologies that address the globalization of ‘Bollywood’ and volumes
written on Shah Rukh Khan (SRK), Bollywood’s reigning superstar, including a couple
of fascinating biographies. But this is the first collection to examine the phenomenon of
SRK’s megastardom within the broader context of the global presence and experience of
Bombay cinema. Indeed, the argument made is that SRK the star, entrepreneur, and ‘icon
for India and Indianness is strongly connected with the accelerated globalization of
Bollywood’ (p. xii).
The Los Angeles Times described SRK as possibly the biggest movie star in the world.
In 2016 his net worth, estimated at US$600 million, far surpasses that of most Hollywood
stars and entertainers. How can we understand the appeal and significance of SRK’s
stardom, one that transcends nations, borders, and cultures? What are the larger implica-
tions of his celebrity for his career and for ‘Bollywood’ as a culture industry? Fourteen
wide-ranging chapters address these and related questions drawing attention to SRK’s
‘celebrity ecology’ (p. xiii), comprised not only of his films but his on- and off-screen
images, interviews, commercials, his performance as a public persona, and his hypervis-
ibility on the internet – all seen to actively shape his stardom.
A contribution of the volume is that it examines SRK as a media assemblage with a
view to highlighting the significance of intertextuality and interconnection. ‘Globalized
polysemy’ and ‘media assemblage theory’ capture the range of meanings and the transi-
ence and fluidity of representations and constructions of the star. Globalization, transna-
tionalism, and transcultural exchange provide a unifying thread in the analysis of SRK’s
Reviews: The location of culture 637

international celebrity. Although many of the chapters revisit well-mined themes of

nation, gender, and identity, they offer some new insights.
Employing media assemblage analysis and star studies in a close reading of two popu-
lar Bollywood films, Dudrah identifies SRK’s ‘ideal Indian Muslimness,’ and his ‘secu-
lar and anti-sectarian’ views as key to his being ‘an effective mediator across religious
and cultural differences and an appealing figure to millions of Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims
and other religious groups’ (p. 12). Gill, in her chapter, also comments on SRK’s por-
trayal of a new type of Muslim hero, which she sees as evidence of his global stardom
that engages larger concerns of the representations of Muslims internationally in a post-
9/11 world. In these and other chapters, there is a sense that the blurring of the lines
between SRK’s film roles and his real-life persona forms a significant part of his appeal
and star power.
Dwyer, for example, argues that part of SRK’s appeal to diasporic audiences is that
his film roles and film texts represent the modern Indian, a ‘cosmopolitan’ or ‘global citi-
zen’ (p. 63), who is ‘admired for his uncompromising Indianness,’ yet is ‘comfortable
with non-Indians’ (p. 63). SRK’s characters negotiate the aspirations of middle- and
upper-middle-class Indians even as the star in his public persona has an international
image. His modern style is coded in a new emotionality; he appears classless and is
highly articulate and multilingual. In their critical analysis of selective ‘family films’ that
play well in India and internationally, Ganesh and Mahadevan further substantiate this
perspective when they observe that SRK portrays a new kind of ‘soft’ masculinity and
characters who are urban and sensitive.
SRK’s fame has been described as ‘hyperstardom.’ The image is that of a star uncon-
tained by his films, bursting out into brands, commercials, public appearances, and social
media. Drawing attention to the anxieties attached to superstardom, Rajadhyaksha asks:
is SRK’s stardom too big for cinema? He questions the ‘sustainability’ (p. 29) of the
cinematic hyperstar and the kind of vehicles and technologies that SRK needs to survive
in this stage of his career while observing that the star’s preoccupation with technology,
action, and superheroes has also to do with larger anxieties about keeping Indian cinema
‘relevant’ (p. 27).
As a hero of modern, globalized India, SRK embodies fantasies of consumerism. That
he is a brand, associated with a global consumer culture, is seen in the visual style and
material culture of the film Don, the 2006 remake of the 1978 film that starred the iconic
Amitabh Bachchan. Seth and Fuchs offer fascinating insights on the film’s style, with
Seth bringing her experience as production designer for the film and a behind-the-scenes
perspective. The authors identify ‘a rhetoric of augmentation’ (p. 75) in both style and
narrative where everything is exaggerated in scale and value. Technology and special
effects provide spectacle and local contexts become global. Locations, colors, costumes,
and props are used to convey cosmopolitanism and global interconnectivity. The new
Don as a ‘global player’ reflects changes in the film industry following ‘economic liber-
alization and the spread of consumerist aspirations in the society’ (p. xix).
Transnational celebrity these days cannot be separated from industry practices and
economics and Vajdovich addresses the economic and creative activities that boost
SRK’s stardom for a more complete understanding of the star as an entrepreneur, busi-
nessman, and marketer. Fuchs’s study of transcultural exchange and material culture also
638 International Sociology Reviews 32(5)

speaks to the cultural economy that is influenced by SRK’s stardom. Examining the crea-
tive practices that developed around the SRK doll, Fuchs notes that it is the product of
ancillary industry outside India. The doll circulates in an international network of fans,
bringing together 21st-century entrepreneurship, affective fandom, and Indian folk tradi-
tions of puppetry.
SRK as part of a globalized mediascape is seen as nothing less than a gateway for
Indian films and culture, and the aesthetic and embodied experience is no small part of
his appeal and the appeal of Bollywood. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and close
reading of Bollywood song and dance, David comments on the aesthetic of engagement
that film song and dance encourages, and observes that SRK’s charisma and audiences’
desire for him are rooted in images of his dancing. Meanwhile, Hirzer examines SRK’s
popularity with fans in Peru and the role of dance in creating a participatory culture for
Bollywood films. In Trinidad, SRK becomes a symbol of global Indianness, and Hindi
cinema helps define what it means to be East Indian in the West Indies. Klein describes
how elements of SRK’s star text have been incorporated into identity formations and
performative practices in Trinidad’s popular culture through local remix traditions, yet
another example of SRK’s local embeddedness and the translation practices that make
his stardom international.
Celebrity today is further complicated by transnational media and global popular cul-
ture that is amplified and transformed on the Internet. Through study of SRK’s internet
presence and use of social media, along with fan participation online, Mader describes the
‘hypervisibility’ of this ‘exceedingly mediated’ (p. xxv) star, that allows him to be omni-
present and to be ‘at the same time content and agent’ (p. 201). Just as fans in Peru connect
with SRK’s star persona through dance performances, lookalike contexts, and theatrical
plays, the internet offers European fans a multitude of representations and the means to
co-create and negotiate his star persona. Fan art and intertextual play are some of the ways
this is achieved. Unfortunately, sample illustrations of the artwork and images that so
meaningfully shape the star–audience relationship are not reproduced.
The volume brings together semiotic analysis of films, star studies, ethnographic
approaches to fandom, and studies of globalization of a non-Western culture industry to
unpack the multidimensionality of SRK’s megastardom. As with any collection, some
chapters are more accessibly written and engaging than others. However, the book dem-
onstrates the importance of understanding SRK’s international stardom as part of the
increasing role of Bollywood globally and in the world film market.
Given the book’s objective of analyzing SRK as a media assemblage and of looking
beyond the films to celebrity ecology, it is surprising that there is no chapter devoted to
analyzing the star’s interviews and public appearances. Although some chapters refer-
ence the distinctiveness of SRK’s stardom or conversely identify what it shares with
global celebrity in the 21st century, the book also raises broader questions regarding the
nature and possible distinctiveness of global superstardom that is rooted in Bollywood
and its relationship to institutional and other practices identified with a particular culture
industry, questions that are relevant to the cultural economy in which such stardom is
situated and that it influences.
On the whole, the book makes a welcome contribution to the academic study of
Bollywood stardom, to star studies more broadly and global popular culture. Its
Reviews: The location of culture 639

contribution will also raise questions about the phenomenon and open the door to new
ways of thinking about superstardom in the 21st century. It will be useful for courses on
Indian cinema, the globalization of Bollywood, and the sociology of celebrity.

Author biography
Lakshmi Srinivas is associate professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts-Boston.
She is the author of House Full: Indian Cinema and the Active Audience (2016), and several arti-
cles on cinema, the ethnography of film experience, and film audiences. Address: Department of
Sociology, University of Massachusetts Boston, 100 William T. Morrissey Blvd, Boston, MA
02125-3393, USA. Email: srinivasl@rcn.com

Vincenzo Cicchelli,
Pluriel et commun: Sociologie d’un monde cosmopolite, Presses de SciencesPo: Paris, 2016; 284 pp.:
ISBN 9782724618853, €24.00

Reviewed by: Vulca Fidolini, University of Strasbourg, France

Keywords
Cosmopolitanism, European sociology, globalization, sociological knowledge

Pluriel et commun is an original contribution to the French sociological panorama.

Indeed, French contemporary social sciences, especially French sociology, seem to be
still skeptical about developing reflections and research to analyze contemporary social
change by adopting theoretical and methodological tools within the paradigm of the
‘reflexive modernization’ (Beck et al., 1994). In this context, some sociologies (e.g., the
ones dealing with environmental questions, gender issues, and migration flows) are try-
ing to adopt global perspectives on societal phenomena. However, the studies on cos-
mopolitism and contemporary ways of experiencing cosmopolitanism, global society,
and human rights are surprisingly absent from the French literature. One of the main
purposes of Pluriel et commun is to elaborate and popularize a contemporary sociology
of cosmopolitism for the French reader.
This ambition has solid roots in the recent works of Vincenzo Cicchelli (2013), who
has been studying for the last five years contemporary constructions of transnational
identities and sensibilities (e.g., by analyzing the case of the European Erasmus students,
who explore ‘Europeanness’ through university exchanges programs) in order to describe
the intrigues of a cosmopolitan socialization.
In the introduction, Cicchelli encourages the development of a ‘sociological cosmo-
politan imagination.’ The introduction is a manifesto for Pluriel et commun by which the
author describes the value of an ongoing dialogue between universalism and particular-
ism – the foundational elements of the cosmopolitanism spirit – for producing a socio-
logical sensibility to interpret our contemporary world and its global dynamics. In
Chapter 1, an in-depth analysis of the major findings of contemporary sociology of glo-
balization leads Cicchelli to confirm the necessity of overcoming the nation-state para-
digm if we are to interpret sociopolitical evolutions of our contemporary societies,