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

CULTURAL RELATIONS AND THE NEW RICH 29
West. Secondly, I examine the meanings of new-rich consumption in reference to
domestic class relations, in the light of the arguments of Veblen and Bourdieu.
Despite the complexity and fluidity of the global commodity market, prestigious
consumer goods and images identified with the West generally remain the
yardstick of luxury. Indeed, participating in and appropriating Western affluence
are often quite explicit goals among the new rich in Asia. This is perhaps most
obvious in consumer labelling practices, in Bangkok for instance, where middleclass
housing estates are given names like California Ville and Le Château (Pasuk
and Baker 1996:121), or in Manila where fashionable boutiques owned and/
or frequented by the new rich often go under names like The Best of New York
and Italina (on similar practices in Indonesia and India, see Young and Lakha).
To some degree, the images of Japanese affluence rival those of the West, and
their influence can be seen, for example, in the expansion of karaoke and the
Japanese car market into other parts of Asia, as well as in the Look East policies
of the Malaysian government (Shiro 1994; Smith 1994). It can also be seen in the
increasing recreational travel into Japan by newly wealthy people from elsewhere
in the region. Yet, the pursuit of high living in Japan itself continues to be framed
largely in reference to images of European luxury (Wakao 1989). 34 Thus, while
new rich Asians may travel increasingly to Japan for holidays, some of their most
popular destinations are Tokyo Disneyland and theme parks like Puroland, in
which they will be treated to a pastiche of medieval Europe (Tanikawa 1997).
Notwithstanding this widening global fascination with Western luxury, the
meanings of particular consumer items and repertoires, and the manner in which
they are used, are not as self-evident as one might suppose from popular
representations of consumer culture and new wealth in Asia. The mistake lies in
assuming that the meanings of consumer goods and consumption patterns are
transparent and universal (Appadurai 1988; Friedman 1994; Miller 1995). At a
narrow economic level, it is undeniable that the consumption of particular cars,
television programmes or fashion accessories indicates something of a
development of Westernisation and global commonality. And there is no doubt
that luxury continues to be associated, in large part, with images of the West. But
increasingly, as the case of Japan’s Puroland indicates, these images have been
dislodged, in both space and time, from their original source, and shaped according
to principles that are new and local. Even where the commodities consumed are
materially identical, the particular meaning they have for consumers, and
audiences, may vary immensely.
What most interests us here is the way in which the meanings of consumption
and consumer items gravitate towards, or are mobilised around, particular social
and political relations to become a basis of distinction and collective identity
construction. 35 The first and broadest of these relations has come to be expressed
as that between Asia and the West. Asia’s identity as a major part of the ‘Third
World’ has long been expressed in terms of consumption, evidenced in numerous
statistical reports and dossiers comparing frequencies of ‘modern’ dwellings,
‘modern’ amenities, automobile ownership, hospital beds, schools, radios and