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

CULTURAL RELATIONS AND THE NEW RICH 17
The most prominent of the contemporary culturalist explanations of new wealth
in Asia have centred on Confucianism and the ethnic Chinese (for instance, Berger
and Hsiao 1988; Tai 1989a; Clegg and Redding 1990; Redding 1990). In their most
simplistic form, Confucianist representations of new wealth in Asia simply
extrapolate a causal relation from the coincidence of rapid industrial growth, and
Confucianist tradition in the countries of East Asia, and among the Chinese ethnic
minorities of Southeast Asia. In their more nuanced forms, they are presented as a
partial explanation alongside ‘economic’, ‘institutional’ or ‘structural’ factors (Clegg
and Redding 1990; Redding 1990). A central proposition is that Confucianism and
Chinese ethnicity constitute the new ‘spirit of capitalism’ in Asia, the counterpart of
Weber’s Protestantism in industrialising Europe (Redding 1990). According to
Berger (1988), the countries of East and Southeast Asia are so culturally
distinctive as to represent a ‘second case of capitalist modernity’ built around the
traditional principles of family and community solidarity, and deference to
authority, as against the individualism that is said to have characterised capitalism
in the West. The other most-often mentioned principles, of industriousness,
discipline and frugality, seem little different from those of Weber’s Protestant ethic
(Weber 1970; Chua 1995:151). According to the proponents of this model,
Confucianism constitutes an ethos that continues to shape consciousness and
behaviour among the peoples of East Asia, and the ethnic Chinese of Southeast
Asia, and is largely responsible for economic growth in the region. Naisbit (1996)
even suggests that it is possible to speak of an overseas Chinese economy that
transcends national boundaries.
There are several major difficulties with the explanatory claims of the Confucianist
or Chinese ethnicity models of new wealth in Asia (Mackie 1989; Lim 1992; McVey
1992b:18—21; Young, Chua and Tan), particularly in their more simplistic forms,
though they have generated useful data on business networks and associated
normative codes (Redding 1990, 1995). However, of most significance to us is the
importance of Confucianist and Chinese ethnicity models to the cultural
construction of the new rich in Asia. Just as Weber’s Protestant Ethic, and Adam
Smith’s model of economic man, played an important part in distilling and
promulgating the ideal capitalist and societal ethos in industrialising Europe, so too
does this appear to be the case with those who advocate Confucianism or Chinese
ethnicity as the hallmarks of capitalist growth in contemporary Asia.
Whereas the bourgeois ideals of Europe were constructed against the Other of
feudalism or barbarity, from within as well as without, Confucianist and Chinese
ethnic representations of Asia’s new rich are formulated with the West as their
primary Other. It is largely in this light that we can understand the appeal to
tradition, continuity and antiquity built into these models, in contradistinction to the
radical historical break that is supposed in Western bourgeois ideology. Similarly,
we can understand the emphasis on family and ‘moral community’, the supposed
Other of Western individualism. In the cultural construction of Asia’s new rich,
these simple oppositions cultivate an identity that is unambiguously distinctive and
morally superior. As one writer on business practices says: ‘[the Chinese] pay