1st Edition
Consumer Culture Theory in Asia History and Contemporary Issues
We live in times of increasing world uncertainty. Consumer culture in Asia has embodied such precariousness, with their unprecedented states of both prosperity and vulnerability.
Works in this volume examine the consumer cultures that exist in today’s precarious Asia. They do this through culturally oriented, critical consumer research. How deeply has the consumer precariousness in Asia been intertwined with the sociohistorical patterning of consumption including class, gender, and other social categories? How do these problematics affect consumers’ identity projects, consumer rituals, and marketplace cultures? How is consumer precariousness aggravated by the governmentality of the superpower? How does the changing landscape of inter-Asian and global popular culture impact consumer culture in these nations? Together, the authors in this volume attempt to answer these questions through consumer research within the paradigm known as consumer culture theory (CCT). Since most CCT inquiry has been in Western contexts, this volume augments the existing knowledge. It presents the most current, critical, historical, and material consumer studies focused on Asia.
This volume will be of interest to seasoned CCT researchers and academics, for anyone new to CCT, and for postgraduate students interested in CCT or writing a consumer culture-related thesis.
1 Introduction
Yuko Minowa and Russell W. Belk
SECTION I History of Consumerism in Asia
2 The Long March of the Commodity in China
Alison Hulme
3 Consumerism in Early Modern Japan: Food, Fashion, and Publishing
Kazuo Usui
SECTION II Consumer Identity Projects
4 Century of Humiliation and Consumer Culture: The Making of National Identity
I-Chieh Michelle Yang, Juliana French, and Christina Lee
5 Predicting a Mother’s Role in Investing in Children’s Education: A Study on Autonomy and Empowerment from India
Akshaya Viayalakshmi, Meng-Hsien (Jenny) Lin, and Sarah Ricks
SECTION III Consumer Rituals
6 Gift-giving and Kinship-making: Male Phoenix in China
Jia Cong and Xin Zhao
7 Solitary Death is Elsewhere: The Making of Memorial Community in Japan
Yuko Minowa
8 The Work of Culture in Thai Theravāda Buddhist Death Rituals
Rungpaka Amy Hackley
SECTION IV Governance and Sustainability in Consumption Practices
9 Utopia and Dystopia: Consumer Privacy and China’s Social Credit System
Eric Ping Hung Li, Guojun (Sawyer) He, Magnum Man Lok Lam, and Wing-sun Liu
10 The Thanatopolitics of Neoliberalism and Consumer Precarity
Rohit Varman and Devi Vijay
11 Cold Chains in Hanoi and Bangkok: Changing Systems of Provision and Practice
Jenny Rinkinen, Elizabeth Shove, and Mattijs Smits
SECTION V Body, Technology, and Mass-Mediated Marketplace Ideologies
12 Market Versus Cultural Myth: A Skin-deep Analysis of the Fairness Phenomena in India
Anoop Bhogal-Nair and Andrew Lindridge
13 Haptic Creatures: Tactile Affect and Human-Robot Intimacy in Japan
Hirofumi Katsuno and Daniel White
Biography
Yuko Minowa is Professor of Marketing in the School of Business at the Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University in New York, Unites States.
Russell Belk is York University Distinguished Research Professor and Kraft Foods Canada Chair in Marketing, Schulich School of Business, York University, Canada.
"Remarkably wide-ranging and undeniably riveting, Consumer Culture Theory in Asia offers a deep dive into the socio-cultural, ideological, and experiential consumption underlying precarity and power in the world’s fastest-growing region. In excavating the impact of neo-colonial development on vulnerable populations, the authors plead for socially sustainable consumer culture." Annamma Joy, Professor of Marketing, The University of British Columbia, Canada.
"Consumer Culture Theory in Asia presents chapters from active researchers who address Asian consumption from a rich variety of historical and theoretical perspectives. Their work will engage the Consumer Culture Theory community as well as students and scholars from the humanities and social sciences." Terrence H. Witkowski, Professor Emeritus of Marketing, California State University, Long Beach, US.
"This volume contains cutting-edge scholarship that traverses myriad historical and contemporary consumption contexts in Asia. Curating work by an interdisciplinary group of scholars, it will prove to be an invaluable resource for those interested in this vital, vibrant area of the globe typified by changes and challenges in the marketplace." Cele Otnes, Anthony J. Petullo Professor of Business Administration, Gies College of Business, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
"People around the world are grappling with how issues of diversity and inclusion impact consumption. Studies in this book contemplate these issues in the marketplace with a focus on vulnerable consumers in Asia—a generally underrepresented region in marketing scholarship." Tonya Williams Bradford, University of California, Irvine, USA.
