ABSTRACT
Post-1993 an entire generation in the middle and upper middle class has been invited to think of itself as global on the basis of its consumption patterns and lifestyle aspirations. Commodities and activities have become the insignia of belonging. Everything from education to commodities to sports to health is marketed in terms of some notion of globality which is nothing other than the imagined lifestyle of the upper middle and upper class in the first world. Globality is self-evidently about aspiring to live as though one were rich and lived in new York, London, Paris, Frankfurt or Amsterdam and not as though one were poor or lower middle class in these cities. Neoliberal globalisation valorises a culture of excess. Proponents may disagree but it cannot be denied that within its logic one can never have too much of anything, be it money, goods, property, sex, leisure, opportunity.
