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

16 MICHAEL PINCHES
business also have a strong hold, and are clearly less damaging to the incumbent
regime. Should they prevail and the economy recover, the ideal image of the new
rich capitalist will most likely continue to be cloaked in collective ethno-nationalist
symbolism.
The idea of accumulating wealth through private investment, independent of the
state and quasi-noble or ethnic privilege, enjoys significant prestige and moral
standing among many capitalists, technocrats and professionals in the region, a lot
of them educated in the West, or influenced by similar education in their own
countries. Moreover, as most chapters in this volume attest, there has been a
widespread shift in occupational prestige, among the middle layers of society from
civil service employment to private enterprise. Today, the most coveted job
appears to be that of the business executive. However, by no means has the idea
of the free-wheeling, individual capitalist been naturalised in the way it has in the
West. Though the figure of the capitalist is now widely celebrated among the
privileged classes across the region, it is most often as meritorious Asian,
nationalist or ethnic cohort.
WEALTH PRODUCTION: CONFUCIANISM,
ETHNICITY AND THE NEW RICH
Capitalist enrichment in many parts of Asia is commonly represented neither as the
product of individual entrepreneurial endeavour and acumen, nor as a
consequence of political-economic structures and processes–the explanations of
wealth accumulation that have hitherto predominated in Western academic texts.
The most striking representation of the new rich in Asia–in the mass media and,
to a lesser extent, in academic discourse–attributes their wealth, in whole or part,
to the traditions of Confucianism, ‘Asian Values’ or some other culturalist variant,
supposing the unique normative, social or spiritual qualities of Asians, Japanese,
Chinese, Malays or other ethnic groups in the region. In the West, the first wave of
thinking along these lines centred on Japan. More recently, it has been other parts
of East and Southeast Asia, and, for some, the whole Asian region.
At its most general level, the ideological arena in which new-rich identities are
being constructed is defined in terms of the East/West dualism. At another level,
the divide is played out in terms of Western liberal democracy versus the great
traditions of Confucianism, Islam and Hinduism. Below this are various contending
ethnicities and nationalisms. 25 These different layers of meaning and rhetoric
clearly do not neatly collapse into each other but, as will become evident, new-rich
identities are commonly constructed as if they did. In this section, I first consider
how particular ‘traditions’, ethnicities and nationalisms in the region are being
redefined around the figure of the new rich, and in contradistinction to the West.
Secondly, I outline some of the tensions that are played out between different
ethnicities and nationalities in reference to the rise of the new rich. Thirdly, I look
at the significance of these ethnicities and nationalities for contemporary class
relations in the region.