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

CULTURAL RELATIONS AND THE NEW RICH 7
state, their involvement in opposition politics and their variable placement in the
changing configuration of classes.
The contributors to this volume find Asia’s new rich to be located in the same
structural positions, as is the case in the country studies of the first volume, and we
too share a concern with exploring the relationship between the new rich and the
changing configuration of classes. For us, though, this concern necessitates a more
open understanding of class and, in particular, one that is sensitive to questions of
social and cultural identity. This means looking not only at productive or economic
relations, or overt political behaviour, but also at how each of these is connected to
status relations, differences in lifestyle, consumption codes and practices,
interpersonal conduct, ethnic affiliations, moral dispositions and social imagery.
How, and to what extent, are the various elements of the new rich constituted, by
themselves and by others, as socially, culturally and economically distinctive?
What moral influence do they wield and how? How are they related to, or
distinguished from, the ‘old rich’ or the ‘old’ and ‘new poor’? Do they constitute new
classes? To what extent are they absorbed by existing classes, and how have they
influenced the character of these classes? These questions cannot be answered
within a narrow political-economic framework.
Any study concerned with the relationship between culture and the new rich of
Asia must begin by problematising what Tai denies, and what many others ignore,
namely that the new rich are emerging in contexts of substantial material inequality
and social tension, and that these characteristics are changing rather than
disappearing. In the absence of a distinctive theoretical literature that takes such a
position in reference to Asia, it is useful to consider briefly the way in which the
relation between culture and class in capitalist societies has been theorised in the
West, most notably within the Marxist and Weberian traditions. 8 In doing so, I
reject the argument that such a literature is inappropriate because it is Eurocentric.
There are a number of difficulties with this argument: one is that the literature and
the realities to which it refers are themselves highly variable over space and time;
another is that much of this literature has been fruitfully adapted by intellectuals in
Asia to the study of their own societies. 9
There appear to be three broad theoretical positions on the connection between
culture and class, which I call the economistic, inclusive and social relational. The
economistic position recognises cultural distinctions between classes or strata
within a wider social totality, explaining them on the basis of differences in
economic position, interest or experience. Thus, in popular representations of
class, differences in lifestyle are commonly presented as a direct consequence of
income differentials. Veblen’s (1979) classic account of the American leisure class,
for example, explains conspicuous consumption, and the hierarchy of prestige that
accompanies this practice, as more or less the simple outcome of wealth
differences. In an often more abstract vein, Marxist accounts of class
consciousness commonly give direct explanatory weight to the positions people
occupy in the relations of production, or the material interests associated with
these positions. These sorts of argument are now widely criticised for their