How Firms Fail at D&I

Abstract

This paper analyzes the impact that inclusive marketing practices might have on society using modest fashion as a case study. The study employs an ethnographic approach to discourse analysis and explores the impact of modest fashion in reshaping the boundaries of exclusion and belonging in the United States. Throughout the paper the author argues that as firms try to become more inclusive in the marketplace, they inadvertently perpetuated hegemonic and micro-hegemonic systems of belonging wherein non-threatening forms of otherness are assimilated into a safe "new normal" and liminal identities are further marginalized.