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

CULTURAL RELATIONS AND THE NEW RICH 5
predispositions. If they ever did, this is no longer the case, and one is particularly
hard-pressed maintaining this model of culture in a context of increasing
globalisation of economic and political forces. Fourthly, this model of culture has a
limited capacity to deal with social differentiation or social structure, where this
entails contention or dissent (Hall 1980; Marcus and Fischer 1986; Sider 1986;
Austin-Broos 1987; O’Hanlon 1989; Keesing 1990, 1991; Hannerz 1992; Dirks et
al. 1994).
Because of conceptual difficulties with overly inclusive ‘way of life’ definitions,
the culture concept is now most fruitfully limited to the sphere of symbols and
meanings (Keesing 1974). However, the danger with this usage, is that it becomes
reified or disembodied from the material world of lived social experience, as is
evident in the Geertzian tradition (Keesing 1990; Roseberry 1991), and in some
streams of postmodern thought which conceive of a world of cultural constructions
virtually independent of agency or political-economic structure (Ulin 1991; Jenks
1993:136—50). One attempt to deal with this problem of symbols and meanings,
and the parallel danger of materialist reductionism, is to transcend both spheres
with concepts such as ‘practice’ (Bourdieu 1977). Another attempt, adopted in this
chapter, is to conceive of the relationship between the two spheres as a broadly
dialectical one, whose path is historical and largely indeterminant (Murphy 1972;
Keesing 1974:94).
While there is still no consensus on the meaning of culture, the above criticisms
have been widely acknowledged in anthropology, sociology and cultural studies, and
are variably built into the contemporary use of the culture concept in these
disciplinary areas. 5 Moreover, in these disciplines, the culture concept is now often
deliberately linked with other analytical concepts. Through the development of
cultural studies, in particular, power relations and social differentiation have been
made integral to much contemporary cultural analysis (Turner 1990; During 1993;
Dirks et al. 1994; Kurtz 1996; Grossberg 1996). 6 Indeed, arguably the best cultural
analysis is that which contributes to our understanding of power and social
differentiation.
Today, it is in political science, management theory and among a few born-again
economists that culture has taken on its most ossified and simplistic form.
Particularly prominent in these disciplines is an equation of culture with
behaviourism, normative determinism and changeless monolithic custom.
Unfortunately, these disciplines have dominated public and academic debate on the
place of culture in industrialisation and development in Asia. For example, in a
recent political science text on political and economic change in the Asian Pacific
region, Simone and Feraru (1995) describe culture as ‘a taken for granted…
constant’ made up of ‘habits (customs), values, beliefs, and attitudes we inherit’.
They then counterpose this to ideologies which are ‘self-conscious patterns of ideas
and images that redefine human beings’ relationships’, and proceed to explore the
relationship between Asia and the West in terms of Asia having cultures and the
West having ideologies (Simone and Feraru 1995: 213—14).