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

78 CONSUMPTION AND SELF-DEFINITION
CONCLUSION
The (not so) Veblenesque model of La Distinction [Bourdieu 1989] may tell
us a great deal about the role of cultural differentiation in the definition of social
posi tion, a process whereby a particular ‘class’-determined habitus
distinguishes itself in the cultural marketplace by identifying itself with a
clearly defined set of products and activities, a lifestyle.
(Friedman 1994:103)
There are current public debates of considerable significance among Muslim
intellectuals in Indonesia (Hefner 1993; Ramage 1995) and Malaysia (Anwar
Ibrahim 1996; Kahn and Loh 1992; Elegant 1996a, 1996b) about values, selfidentity,
modernity and the relations between civil society and the state. These
debates are of great interest, especially as they contribute to the constitution of
distinctive Asian modernities, and the paradoxical quest for a traditionalism that is
cosmopolitan and a cosmopolitanism that is traditionally or religiously grounded
(Kwok 1994:29).
Nevertheless, all these efforts at persuasion, the attempts to reach the hearts
and minds of the new urban classes, are perhaps excessively focused on the
cognitive level and take insufficient account of how large numbers of people are
already predisposed to certain manifestations of modern identity by the practices of
everyday life. The arguments put forward in this chapter have tried, through
reference to several Southeast Asian countries, to show how the normative and
political consequences of consumption and lifestyle are too often underestimated.
One should not exaggerate the degree to which the consumption patterns and
lifestyles of the Asian new rich have transported urban residents into the
existential condition of global societies characterised by choice and a ‘puzzling
diversity of options and possibilities’ (Giddens 1991:3). Yet, nor do such trends
have negligible impact. It varies, according to the degree of industrial (and postindustrial)
transformation, the nature of the city in question, and the historical and
cultural circumstances of each case. Furthermore, one could suggest that the
perceived cultural separateness of more affluent ethnic Chinese in these different
cities may have more to do with the fact that their wealth and hybrid lifestyles set
them apart, than with some improbable notion that they constitute some form of
transnational cultural, economic (and potentially political) entity. I have shown the
implausibility of viewing the Chinese diaspora as being culturally unified to any
effective extent.
Social analysts like Giddens and Castells posit their analyses on ‘posttraditional’
situations. 25 I would not want to characterise the cultures of the urban
complexes of any of these countries as ‘traditional’. Yet, beyond the concerns of
governments with shaping national values and identities–for lofty reasons
sometimes, but always to buttress social control–there are social groups and
social movements that have similar concerns. They do want to sustain their
collective identity even though they find it necessary to redefine themselves in an