Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia - Jurusan Antropologi ...

132 WENDY A.SMITH
remarked that it was only in Japanese companies that one could become a
manager from the unionised ranks. In fact, Ridzuan had been a union leader and
this was a major factor in his promotion as this pattern of career advancement is
typical in large companies in Japan itself.
The Malay new graduates, who were largely from rural peasant origins,
owed their social mobility to the NEP. As bumiputera, they could have been
employed in any large company, and they were highly mobile. But they tended to
stay on in the Japanese company, not so much from a loyalty created by the
Japanese corporate culture, but because of pressures from family and from their
financial commitments, especially housing loans and the hire purchase of cars and
consumer items, in order to maintain a stable income.
The workers on the whole remained working class, but in a privileged position.
Through steady wage increments and security of tenure under the Japanese
system, they were able, after over twenty years’ employment in the company, to
buy reconditioned cars and the simplest form of single-storey terrace housing.
The steady income, prospects of security of tenure and promotion for the local
managers affected their relationships both within the organisation and in the wider
social context. However, these were expressed in different ways by the different
groups. The senior local managers demonstrated their middle-class identity with
less emphasis on their ethnic identity. They lived in the mixed ethnic middle-class
housing estates in the suburbs of Kuala Lumpur and Petaling Jaya. They joined
prestigious golf clubs where members did not congregate in ethnically exclusive
groups and where alcohol was openly consumed. Their wives did not work for
wages. The Malays among them maintained their traditional ties with the kampung
folks, but overall their focus was much more on the nuclear family, especially on
the financial expenditure for their children’s overseas education. Nevertheless, ‘old
school’ middle-class Malays such as Sanusi extended patronage in a general
sense, not just to immediate relatives and friends, but to workers in the company in
a general sense, albeit mainly to Malays.
The Malay majority of new graduates among the local junior managers were of
a different generation from Sanusi. They came from peasant origins and they
owed their position not to personal patrons or family help, but to the state. They, with
less confidence in their new-found middle-class status, expressed it much more
overtly in terms of symbols of their ethnicity and with conspicuous consumption in
the form of cars and furniture, and with religious observances, such as making the
haj at an early age. Their wives, usually as educated as themselves, needed to
work in professional occupations to help fund these family expenditures.
The veterans from the ranks who became junior managers were different from
the new graduates. Their wives were not highly educated and either did not work or
engaged in small business activities based at home. Thus the lifestyles of these
veteran junior managers were not so opulent as those of the graduates. Still, they
lived on lower-cost modern housing estates and usually were able to purchase a
house larger than a single-storey terrace. They tried to learn golf at the cheaper