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

10 MICHAEL PINCHES
capitalism, which are global as well as local. Thus, the new rich are also uniquely
positioned in a global and international context, in which their societies have long
been subjugated and disadvantaged. Indeed, the emergence of Asia’s new rich
represents a major change in this state of affairs, both structurally and in terms of
international status relations. Thus, it is with reference to these two structural
axes, the local and global, that we explore the cultural construction of the new rich
in Asia. 16 On the face of it, these axes appear to correspond respectively with each
of the two dominant representations of Asia’s new rich, noted earlier: as Oriental
producer and global consumer; one rooted in local traditions of social and
economic order, the other in the free-flowing global commodity market. Yet, as is
evident in the remainder of this chapter, and in those that follow, each of these
representations of the new rich in Asia needs to be understood in reference to both
the global and the local, and, most significantly, the interplay between them.
Indeed, it is this interplay, mediated through the unprecedented movement
across state borders of people, capital, consumer goods, fashion and lifestyle
images, and contending politico-religious ideologies, that underpins the heightening
of both cosmopolitanism, and ethnic or nationalist differentiation in Asia. 17
Advertisers, media programmers, intellectuals and political ideologues–many of
them, themselves new rich–thus often play a pivotal role in the shaping of new rich
identities, as shown in most chapters in this book. Yet these identities also vary in
relation to the particular organisational or institutional settings in which the newly
rich make their wealth (see Smith and Buckley, this volume). 18 Those who are
most dependent on the state tend to assume identities heavily tied to the nation or
locality (Antlöv, Shamsul, Smith), while those whose wealth and livelihoods are
based on private global capital seem more likely to develop transnational identities,
to some degree dislodged from the nation (Young, Chua and Tan). Yet this pattern
is not at all clear-cut: new rich identities may be strongly conditioned by ongoing
local ties, independent of the state (Smith), or may arise in the playing out of
broader ethno-national or religious tensions, even among diasporic new rich
communities (Lakha). Furthermore, as Young argues in his chapter, it is commonly
in the more amorphous experiences and practices of everyday life–in such places
as shopping malls and housing estates–that new rich identities are fabricated.
In the remainder of the chapter I explore the principal cultural constructions of
Asia’s new rich with reference to the relational framework outlined above. In
particular, I want to draw attention to the differential status honour awarded to
people on the basis of the structural positions they occupy, and to examine how
these come to constitute cultural boundaries through which social relations are
negotiated and constituted.
CHANGING CLASS AND STATUS
CONFIGURATIONS IN ASIA
The phenomenon of new wealth in many parts of contemporary Asia evidences
not only a rise in economic growth, but also fundamental shifts in class structure