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

70 CONSUMPTION AND SELF-DEFINITION
pressures to conform to given codes of behaviour are also present. There are
many other sites of more formal acculturation, such as schools, universities,
professional workplaces, training institutes for civil servants and the military, and
so on. To a significant degree, these are relatively closed institutions which
inculcate established models of behaviour and identity. When the middle classes
were more closely tied to the state for employment and training, they acquired
many of their normative models in institutions of this kind, so that these formal
institutions had a more significant influence on the broader character of middleclass
mores. However, we have seen that in Malaysia, Thailand and, to a lesser
degree, Indonesia, the latest patterns of growth are bringing a much more diverse
range of people into the ranks of the well-off.
At the further extreme from formal training institutions are the mass media.
Here the upwardly mobile are presented with many models, both national and
international, of modern urban sophistication, Shopping malls lie somewhere in
between relatively diverse sources of socialisation like the media, 16 and
prescriptive institutions such as civil service training institutes. They are open to a
very wide part of society, 17 yet full participation comes at a price which only the
middle class can pay with ease. There is prescriptiveness here, yet there is also
some scope for individual flair and originality. These are places where broad
elements of the new rich display their mastery of the new codes of behaviour, and
can observe and comment on others. They are also venues where more marginal
groups can learn and assimilate the same codes at little cost, as they seek ways to
participate in a seductive but imperfectly understood prosperity, so brilliantly
displayed, so accessible, yet frustratingly out of reach.
OPEN ACCESS ACADEMIES OF SOCIAL
DIFFERENTIATION
We should not underestimate the cultural role of shopping centres, malls,
redeveloped ‘heritage’ precincts, theme parks, and redeveloped downtown
commercial areas with interior pedestrian zones (Harvey 1989). Kevin Hewison
observes pithily that the new shopping malls are the public parks of Bangkok
(Hewison 1995). 18They provide all manner of indoor, air-conditioned amusements
for the public. Families wander through their halls and corridors, absorbing
instruction in consumption behaviour and developing status associations with
brand names. Many come simply to window-shop, often a reasonably serious activity
and a costless form of consumption. In Singapore ‘shopping’ is a major pastime,
and much of this activity is ‘simply’ window-shopping. In Bangkok, some capitalists
were so confident in the early 1990s about both national economic growth and the
efficacy with which their malls created felt needs among consumers that they said
that they were untroubled by the high numbers of visitors who simply came to look
and bought nothing. As incomes rise in the decade ahead, the investors claimed,
today’s window-shoppers will have been psychologically prepared to come and
spend their disposable incomes in the developers’ stores. Thus, there is a lot