Transcending the ‘Home’: : Urban, Greek Women, Direct Sales and the Politics of Europeanization

This article discusses the configurations of ‘home’ as they unfold in the experience of urban, middle-class, middle-aged Greek homemakers selling and consuming the products of a European-based, international, direct sales cosmetics company, called Oriflame. It explores how the desire of these actors to redefine themselves as professional working women participating in Europeanization and globalization, and thus escape the boundaries of domesticity, was materialized through their affiliation with Oriflame. Ironically, as I will show here, the very structural limitations of direct sales and the elusiveness of the neoliberal arguments this company used to attract Greek women to its so-called ‘global family’, ultimately transformed Greek homemakers and mothers into a particular type of pink-collar homeworker whose entrepreneurial efforts were securely entrenched in the home and the family. The experiences of those involved with Oriflame highlight how in the context of Europeanization and globalization the family is: a site where traditional women’s roles are being redefined; the bona fide locus of consumption; and finally, a site to observe the ongoing conflation between consumption and production, a prevalent characteristic of global economic restructuring.