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

58 CONSUMPTION AND SELF-DEFINITION
My main interest, then, is in the apparently apolitical processes of
identity formation through consumption. One cannot fail to note, however, that
what is being built up here are patterns of association and representations of
collective identity of surprising durability, and this has clear political significance.
As Castells (1997:7) observes: ‘the social construction of identity always takes
place in a context marked by power relationships’. These are matters that states in
the region, seeking to secure their own legitimacy, to build national consciousness
and exercise social control, attempt to direct through their command of an array of
major institutions (education, media and so on). Thus consumption practices may
be overwhelmingly apolitical in intent, but still have significant political
consequences.
The new sites and practices of consumption are rendered even more effective in
shaping new lifestyles and identities because the emerging wealthy elites are
themselves so new. As the leading Thai social scientist Anek Laothamatas
observes, ‘historically speaking, most [of the Thai] middle classes are from
uneducated parents, either merchants or farmers’ (The Nation 1994:78). This
quality of newness of the new rich is found in most of the other industrialising
countries discussed here. The people who form these elites are mostly new, and
their social environment–a globalised urban-industrial milieu–is also new. The
upwardly mobile seek models of behaviour appropriate to their new elevated
status. Many of those at the margin–excluded for many reasons, but most
immediately because they do not have any money–nevertheless show a
fascination with the cultural codes associated with the wealth and power of the new
elites.
On the one hand, my arguments will show that consumption and lifestyle
contribute to the formation of new elite identities. Global influences and the
complexities of the urban milieu serve to some extent to uncouple the new rich
from established national and communal identities. They are more internationally
oriented, constructing novel narratives of themselves and their place in the world
from creative blends of their own cultural inheritance and global influences (see
Heryanto, this volume). Ethnicity frequently has low significance for the higher
reaches of these elites (see Smith, Shamsul, Heryanto, this volume), concurring
with McVey’s observation of Southeast Asia’s capitalists that ‘both business
interests and cultural forces bring together Chinese and indigenous elites into a
common cosmopolitan nouveau riche consumer style which offers itself as the
high-culture model for modern capitalist Southeast Asia’ (McVey 1992: 22; see also
Lim 1983; Hewison 1993:168; Rodan 1993a). These considerations tend to reduce
the association of wealth with ethnicity in the region.
On the other hand, there is another tendency that has attracted a lot of
speculation–the high proportion of ethnic Chinese among the new rich throughout
the region. This alternative perspective gives greater emphasis to the
‘Chineseness’ of the new rich, linking the adaptability and cultural distinctiveness of
the new rich less to sociological factors and more to a shared cross-national
Chinese heritage (the more invidious version of this line of ‘explanation’ casts