Chandos Asian Studies Series. Oxford: Chandos Publishing, 2014. xxxi, 221 pp. (Figures.) US$140.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-84334-761-3.
This book is a collection of essays authored by a diverse group of young scholars and artists from such places as the UK, Denmark, Iceland, and the US, with quite rich academic and non-academic backgrounds in literature, philosophy, sociology, and media and cultural studies, and experiences of growing up, living, working, or studying in China. These credentials are important for their subjects of study, the evolving consumerism of today’s China, which requires close and intimate observations and even participation. Since modern consumer society and consumerism as an ideology are now a global phenomenon with historical roots in Western societies, the multiple and comparative perspectives that the authors take in their examination of China’s case are especially valuable.
The book’s editor Alison Hulme argues that as “capitalism becomes an increasingly global phenomenon, consumer society is the mode of organization desired by nation states,” and China now needs to “turn a consuming society into a consumer society (i.e. one in which the buying and selling of goods and services is in reality the most important social and economic activity)” (xxiv; emphasis in original). Hulme then quickly qualifies her argument: “the meeting of capitalism (and therefore consumerism) and communism in China,” and the “constantly re-negotiated conundrum of capitalist-communist consumerism … differs from any yet seen in global development and creates new questions for established theories of consumerism” (xxv). The introduction thus cogently spells out the dichotomy of “capitalism (consumerism) vis-à-vis communism” (or the “conundrum,” as Hulme puts it) as the quintessential problem for the authors to explore, and, meanwhile, a task for theoretical self-reflection on consumerism. Hulme acknowledges that the direction of Chinese consumerism “cannot be fully known,” and thus the issues the authors discuss “are riddled with awkward contradictions and cultural attitudes are in constant flux” (xxv). Such a caveat about the tentativeness of taking China’s pulse becomes a cliché. Yet the sincerity and seriousness of the authors’ efforts can be seen throughout the book.
The chapters are grouped into two parts. The first part has five chapters addressing consumer culture in China today. The first chapter, by Xin Wang, examines the formation of China’s middle class within the context of consumer culture and society, drawing heavily on the theories of French cultural philosopher Pierre Bourdieu. Wang’s essay illustrates the double bind that is both theoretical and methodical. He aptly applies Bourdieu’s ideas about class distinction in contemporary capitalist society to China, observing the interplay of the cultural, symbolic capital, and economic, material status at work in the Chinese middle class. However, Wang recognizes at the same time the difficulties in describing and defining the Chinese middle class in purely Bourdieuan terms. On the one hand, he states that the Chinese middle class distinguishes itself by engaging in the consumption of cultural, educational, and other status-boosting products (or suzhipromotion, a Chinese concept mentioned by many authors in the book, somewhat akin to Bourdieu’s “distinction” and “taste”), with ample case studies. On the other hand, Wang concludes that members of the so-called Chinese middle class find their social distinction or identity primarily through consumption of commodities or ownership of material wealth (20). What Wang does not address, however, is the political culture or the ideology of the Party-state in China that simultaneously encourages the commodity fetish and suppresses any political and social engagement. Bourdieu certainly has no answer to this “Chinese characteristic,” and Wang’s response is regrettably scarce.
The second chapter, by Calvin Hui, takes on the interesting task of examining the legacy of socialism and its linkage to the contemporary fashion industry from the 1970s (the Cultural Revolution) to the present. It’s a Foucauldian genealogical inquiry with a good deal of insight, and its feminist focus on gender and sexuality is interesting in itself. The third chapter, by Gabriel Lafitte, explores the ways the exotic and ethnic Tibet has been consumed by the booming Chinese tourism industry. This chapter confronts the political question of China with/in Tibet. This draws attention directly to the political and ideological battles waged both at the forefront and behind Tibet, either as a site of intense conflict or as a commodity for tourist consumption. The fourth chapter, by Karen Tam, offers a fascinating narrative of the fake art products or shanzhai(counterfeiting) phenomenon in China, and questions the far-reaching implications this pervasive Chinese copy-cat cultural practice has on the meaning of the “original” and the “authentic.” Tam’s question reminds us of Walter Benjamin’s query of when modern technology of mechanic reproduction threatened to deprive customers and society of the aura of the original and authentic art work. The fifth chapter, by Qingyan Ma, is an interesting field-work report on how medicine and health care is being rapidly turned into a commodity in China and the social and economic implications of this.
The second part of the book consists of three chapters, one by Geir Sigurdsson on traditional Chinese philosophy’s possible implications for today’s consumerism; a chapter by Andreas Steen on the revolutionary model soldier Lei Feng from the 1960s which shows the sharp ideological contrast with today’s consumerism; and a final chapter by Giovanna Puppin on the ambiguous and awkward relationship between Maoist socialist ideology and the contemporary advertising industry, another illustration of ideological conflicts and contrasts. These chapters nicely contextualize Chinese consumerism in terms of its historical and political conditions, highlighting and reinforcing the “Chinese characteristics” of consumerism, specifically and emphatically, its political and ideological nature. Consumerism, in a nutshell, is better seen as an ideology or a set of values, and we will be better served by viewing Chinese consumerism dissected and diagnosed as such, in an ongoing ideological battleground that involves all members of society across the world. For that, this book is certainly a good starting point.
Liu Kang
Duke University, Durham, USA
pp. 409-411