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

CULTURAL RELATIONS AND THE NEW RICH 41
consumers, the new rich appear to arouse a good deal of resentment and
antagonism from those they have left behind. Certainly, these sorts of concerns are
evident in some of the quotations that open this section.
However, the sentiments of resentment against the new rich appear to invoke
varied perspectives on the status of high consumption. In Smith’s chapter on
Malaysia (Chapter 4), workers struggle for respectability in much the same way as
the middle-class new rich, except that workers can afford only reconditioned cars
and small houses, rather than the new cars and larger houses of the middle class.
A similar picture on Singapore is presented by Chua and Tan in Chapter 5. While
this may suggest the incorporation of the working class under the legitimate aesthetic
culture of the bourgeoisie, to return to Bourdieu’s model, it is also consistent with
the potentially disruptive sentiment of envy, referred to in one of the opening
quotations. Antlöv’s chapter on Indonesia (Chapter 7) documents a different
perspective on the consumer practices of the new rich. In this case, villagers resent
the new rich, not so much out of envy, but rather because the conspicuous private
consumption of the new rich flies in the face of the ‘traditional’ morality of community
reciprocity. This morality lies outside the dominant aesthetic described by
Bourdieu. Indeed, arguably it lies outside the aesthetic realm altogether, though it is
used in judgement of it. It may be that in many cases worker and peasant
constructions of the new rich incorporate both envy and moral condemnation. 48
What is perhaps most interesting is that either way, they may ultimately threaten
the security of the new rich and of the wider social, political order. This, at least,
seems to be the concern in the second last quotation from Lee Kuan Yew.
LABELS, CATEGORIES AND CLASSES: EAST
AND WEST
Although this chapter variously uses terms like new rich, middle class and
bourgeoisie to describe and analyse, it must also be acknowledged that these terms
are themselves cultural constructions and hence form part of the world we need to
explore and problematise. The term ‘new rich’ was chosen by the editors of the
series for its apparent descriptive simplicity, but also because of the fact that it is an
expression that is commonly used in some parts of Asia to describe the emergence
of a new social phenomenon. Indeed, perhaps the clearest evidence that a ‘new
rich’ has acquired significance in Asia is to be found in the emergence and popular
usage of new class vocabularies centred on those meanings that have been
discussed throughout this and other chapters in the volume.
The most widely used label identifying newly rich people across the region seems
to be the English term ‘middle class’, as is evident from a number of chapters in
this volume. As with its use in the West, the term has taken on various meanings
exemplified in Ockey’s chapter on Thailand (Chapter 9). Two points in Ockey’s
account are of particular interest in this context. The first is that after a long
absence, the term ‘middle class’ reappeared in academic writing on Thailand only
after the upturn of industrial growth and increasing affluence. While there had long