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

76 CONSUMPTION AND SELF-DEFINITION
Consumption and other behaviours are melded–they become habitual and even
normatively sanctioned among one’s peers–into a lifestyle. A lifestyle ‘can be
defined as a more or less integrated set of practices which an individual embraces,
not only because such practices fulfil utilitarian needs, but because they give
material form to a particular narrative of self-identity’ (Giddens 1991: 81). On the
one hand consumption choices and other elements of lifestyle achieve a definite
coherence between groups and even classes (Bourdieu 1989), and thus become
basic aspects of social differentiation. Consumption and lifestyle choices ‘are
decisions not only about how to act but who to be’ (Giddens 1991:81).
The estates allow the wealthier members of society to move in a much more
socially homogeneous environment. Many have their own shopping precincts, or
even an adjacent mall, to complement their facilities (for example, the Mega Mall
at Lippo City in Jakarta). The two belong quite naturally together. A report in the
Singapore Business Times (2 December 1995) notes that middle-class consumers
pick up many of their ideas on ‘interior design in the shopping malls they visit, in
the hotel dining rooms they frequent and, often, in the workplace’. Home, mosque,
temple, school, market, office, transportation systems, clubs, sporting venues,
health services, entertainment and many other aspects of life can be knit together
in a relatively socially homogeneous continuum of experience, with only the dense
pollution and gargantuan traffic jams to remind the middle-class commuters of the
difficult urban environment beyond the boundaries of their controlled and
comfortable estates, malls and offices. What developers are selling in Jakarta–and
in Malaysia (Goh 1996)–is entry into a comprehensive modern lifestyle. This is
conspicuous consumption, certainly. Even more surely, it is the conscious but often
unreflective creation of identity. By living in this way, and internalising many of the
lifestyles’ implicit values, the residents are giving material form to particular
narratives of self-identity.
There are grades of development too, beyond the large and opulent estates that
I have mentioned. Some are built in Indonesia by government housing agencies in
peri-urban areas. Mohamad Sobary (1991, 1995) has written an interesting study of
one such place, Suralaya in Tangerang, West Java. In it he traces the gradual
bifurcation of status in the settlement between the original villagers and the urban
middle-class commuters who moved into the new housing complex built next to the
existing village in Suralaya. The forms of self-classification he found there contrast
orang kampung (villagers) with orang komplek (newcomers living in the complex);
orang tidak berpendidikan (uneducated) with orang pendidikan (educated); orang
miskin (poor person) with orang kaya (rich person) (Sobary 1991:33—34). Other
expressions of these same binary oppositions were orang kampung (villagers):
orang kota (townspeople): tani (farmers) : pegawai kantor (office workers): orang
kecil (commoners): priyayi (elite) (Sobary 1991:54). I visited Suralaya in 1995 with
Pak Sobary, and was able to observe the changes since his original research. In spite
of the social distance between the villagers and the middle-class residents of the
housing complex, relations between the communities were mostly harmonious
(Sobary 1991, 1995). However, Sobary’s earlier study also referred to a very large