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

80 CONSUMPTION AND SELF-DEFINITION
4 I do so since these are the issues that concern this chapter. Simply to contain the
chapter within the limits of the themes of the chapter, I will not engage the closely
related arguments about the connections between economic success and Confucian
culture (Berger and Hsiao 1988). However, when considering the links between
entrepreneurship and Confucianism, I again draw readers’ attention to the gap
between the simplistic enthusiasms of Naisbit (1996) and the nuanced and scholarly
article by Mackie (1992a).
5 Even after intermarriage and abandonment of the use of a Chinese language.
6 Dr Kwok’s theoretical stance is heavily influenced on this point by Weber and
Gellner. See Kwok 1994.
7 ‘ The reflexive project of the self, which consists in the sustaining of coherent, yet
continuously revised, biographical narratives, takes place in the context of multiple
choice as filtered through abstract systems’ (Giddens 1991:5).
8 Even though, in Singapore, their social role is much diminished.
9 A rather more familiar experience to many Hong Kong people, whose stereotypes of
mainlanders are found in popular culture, TV soap operas and so on (Lilley 1993).
10 The other main ethnic groups are Malays (15 per cent) and Indians (7 per cent).
11 ‘So it was that the gathering identity of Hong Kong people during the last years of the
sixties was not the civic loyalty of the citizen, not an identity of community interest,
which in any case was denied by the philosophy of laissez-faire. It was rather an
identity of life-style, a shared recognition of similar self-images, real or desired, of
existential choices, from food to education, that had to be made now that Hong Kong
people could no longer be guided either by Chinese tradition, or (since the demise of
Shanghai) Chinese modernity–Tradition, as well as modernity, would now have to
be re-made in Hong Kong, if not by scholars, then by the Shaw Brothers’ (Turner
1996:23).
12 Of course, large numbers of the wealthy urban citizens of these countries have
experienced rapid–in some cases dazzling–advances in prosperity. Many have
learnt very rapidly, others not. Sulak Sivaraksa in Thailand, for example, laments the
vulgar ostentation and rootlessness of such people (The Nation 1994:76): ‘The very
moment I see one, I can spot them a mile off. Middle classes are people who if they
are rich, flaunt their wealth. If they are educated, flaunt their knowledge. They want
bigness, but not in the sense of excellence.’
13 The political scientist Graham Little wrote a persuasive account of how, even given
the minimal clothing used on an Australian beach, a middle-class woman could
effortlessly declare her status by the way she wore a ribbon in her hair (personal
communication, 1972).
14 I would like to thank Professor Jamie Mackie for this observation, and for pointing to
the great potential there is for biographical studies of these major entrepreneurs.
15 priyayi: Javanese aristocrat or senior Javanese official.
16 How relative the media’s diversity is varies of course from country to country. The
media in Indonesia, for example, is reasonably diverse, though hardly free from state
intervention (or the public outrage of, for example, Muslims on certain issues).
17 Not to everyone certainly. Mike Davis (1990) examines the phenomena in Los
Angeles, and shows how the malls are actually designed to make the poorest ranks of
society feel ill at ease and out of place. If they don’t take the liberally provided hints,
they attract direct attention from security staff to dissuade them from spoiling the
relative social homogeneity of the mall. Chua Beng Huat (1992:119) reports how the