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

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How a revolution becomes a dinner party
Stratification, mobility and the new rich in urban China
Christopher Buckley
INTRODUCTION
Mention of the ‘new rich’ in urban China is likely to evoke images of ostentatious
wealth and fast-talking entrepreneurs; and mention of their ‘culture’ or of ‘cultural
constructions’ is likely to bring to mind the garish status symbols favoured by the
newly wealthy sections of China’s urban population–portable telephones, luxury
imported cars, nightclubs and expensive restaurants, foreign liquor. But any
attempt to explain the cultural dimensions of the emergence of a class of ‘new rich’
in present-day urban China must attempt to look past familiar images and address
the conundrum of the relationship between culture and social change, between the
social features of the new wealthy elite and the objects, activities and practices that
define their emergent identity. Like a Möbius strip, culture–the attitudes, values
and beliefs expressed in material life and social organisation–and changes in
society and economy seem to lead to endless loops of mutual causation (Lamont
and Lareau 1988). In this chapter, I hope to suggest how we can better disentangle
the links between the ‘cultural construction’ of the new rich and their socioeconomic
position in urban Chinese society by focusing on the social structures or
networks which mediate between broader economic and social changes and the
lives of individuals. In attempting to relate cultural processes to social change, we
can easily fall into the habit of treating culture either as a homogeneous, unitary
thing ‘owned’ by all members of a class, or as a set of psychological dispositions,
such as entrepreneurial values, locked inside the heads of its possessors.
What is missing from such approaches is consideration of the role of intermediary
social networks, such as family units and personal social networks, as elements in
social life that form bridges between broader social and economic changes and the
circumstances that shape individuals’ life-chances, values and identities. In this
chapter, I hope to show how social networks, especially ties of friends and
associates, help us better to understand the cultural identity of urban China’s ‘new
rich’–those people who have acquired considerable wealth and status as a result
of the economic reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping. I will argue that, in many
respects, the self-creation of a ‘new rich’ cultural identity in this setting reflects the
personal interactions and exchanges, and the related forms of sociability, that play