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

CULTURAL RELATIONS AND THE NEW RICH 31
1996) and the restoration of buildings deemed to be a part of the national heritage
(Lim 1991; Askew and Logan 1994).
An interpretation of the above points is implicit in the opening quotation from
Tai. Instead of reading this statement for its literal veracity, it might be better
understood for its identity politics, set against a historical background of Western
domination and belittlement. According to this reading, Tai’s statement might best
translate as: ‘the new rich of Asia have achieved all that Western modernity has to
offer, but more than that, they have done so by maintaining their own cultural
distinctiveness’. While this kind of identity politics might be implicit in aspects of
consumer practice throughout the region, it has also been variously promoted in
state ideologies, most aggressively in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, as a
means of legitimising the authority of incumbent regimes, as I noted earlier in
relation to ‘Asian Values’. While these regimes benefit from heightened levels of
consumption, they also selectively invoke anti-Western or anti-materialist sentiment
in trying to prevent forms or degrees of consumption that might arouse excessive
resentment, or be conceived as posing a challenge to the dominant political
morality (Heryanto, Chua and Tan). 37 The response in the West to heightened
levels of consumption in Asia has been favourable among business people and
politicians seeking new markets. But there is also evidence of continued claims to
status superiority. Thus, while commentators in the West may marvel at the
diligence, Oriental business acumen and paternalistic authority of Asian capitalists,
some–such as the West Australian journalist featured in the last quotation at the
beginning of this section–simultaneously look upon them as lacking the civility and
cultivation that might be expected of the Western bourgeoisie.
Another set of relations, played out through changing lifestyles and consumption
practices, are those between different nations within Asia. Even if the West
remains the principal Other of Asian economic success, the countries of Asia are also
divided as competitors for regional economic, political and cultural advantage. With
the end of the Cold War, the relative decline of the American presence in Asia and
the heightened global status of the Asian region, one might expect this status
competition within the region to become increasingly important. Having been
caught up in a common quest for modernity and development, officials, national
elites and rising middle classes have used heightened levels and overtly nationalist
forms of consumption as national status claims vis-à-vis other countries and
peoples in the region. This is played out, for instance, among the tens of thousands
of new rich in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia whose lifestyles include being
served by maids from the Philippines and Indonesia. Not only is the fact of having
Filipino or Indonesian servants a private source of consumer status for the new
rich; it also stands as a symbol of collective ethno-nationalist achievement vis-à-vis
the Philippines and Indonesia. In the case of the Philippines, this, in turn, has
contributed to a nationalist counter-quest for prosperity and renewed regional
honour (Pinches). Through their consumption, the new rich of Asia appear as
exemplars of national development and prosperity, in relation to both the West
and other, less wealthy, countries in the region.