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Understanding middle class consumers from the justification of taste: a case study of Beijing The Journal of Chinese Sociology 2016 3:14 Abstract This paper focuses on the consumer orientation of the middle class in contemporary China, using the data from 30 interviews with middle class people conducted in Beijing. The existing literature tends to depict the Chinese middle class one-dimensionally as in pursuit of either conspicuous display or frugality and neglect the moral justifications consumers deploy, whereas this paper argues that peoples’ justifications for their tastes are key to understanding contemporary Chinese consumers. My analysis draws attention to both aesthetic and moral justifications of taste present in subjective accounts. It highlights consumers’ self-referential orientations: the pursuit of pleasure, tempered by considerations regarding comfort, is a major form of aesthetic justification. Living within one’s means, i.e. keeping a balance between expenditure and income, is the main moral justification of taste of the middle class. Consumers’ orientations draw on a new set of elements, conceptualised in this research as ‘the orientation toward personal pleasure and comfort’. Although having been common and widespread in most highly developed capitalist economies, these elements did not exist in Maoist China. Nevertheless, this orientation, combined with motives and orientations already present in China, can be seen to have taken effect from the way people justify their patterns of consumption in the course of interviews. Keywords Taste, Justification, China, Middle class, Consumption
Introduction
Until 1978, the hegemonic discourse in China demanded the ethic of frugality, and saving for the future has remained as a feature of Chinese people to the present day (Chua 2000). The traditional Chinese culture advocates sacrifice and commitments, for example, for family and work. However, many scholars argue that in the contemporary period, especially after 1978, Chinese have become more engaged in conspicuous consumption and extravagant expenditure (Chen 2003; Wang 2005). Such a paradoxical picture—a pattern of conspicuous consumption embedded in a less developed, frugal, and even ascetic national and cultural context—has left the consumer orientation of Chinese people something of a mystery. The contradiction is significantly exhibited by the contemporary middle class, who participate in consumption practices more extensively, enabled by their increasing economic and cultural capital. This paper aims to untangle the mystery by revealing ways in which the consumer orientation of the middle class has developed and how new elements in consumer orientation are tempered by a more traditional set of motives. The guiding research questions are as follows: What justifications of consumption are offered by the Chinese middle class? And which type of consumer orientation is implied by those answers? This paper will address them mainly through an examination of taste, namely the preferences expressed in consumption.
While consumption patterns of the contemporary middle class have been widely studied by scholars of various social science disciplines, the existing studies either are descriptive analyses with less theoretical concerns or build their arguments upon ambiguous links with empirical evidence. There are hence no fully satisfactory explanations of patterns of consumption, and, in particular, how people orient themselves toward goods and services in China.
Among many of the relevant studies, Zhou Xiaohong, Wang Jianping and Wang Ning have made important contributions to sociological understandings of middle class consumers. Based on empirical evidence, Zhou and Wang both agree that the middle class are ambivalent with either frugality or consumerism and strive to balance them. As regards the proposition ‘it is necessary to spend the money due in future’, 43 % of middle class respondents think it appropriate, whereas the corresponding percentage is much lower among lower class respondents (29 %) (Zhou 2005, 73). It is explained that this difference is enabled by the steady jobs and income among the middle class (ibid: 73). Moreover, 61 % of middle class respondents think the statement appropriate that ‘it is wiser to earn and spend than to be frugal and save’, yet only 44 % of lower class respondents think so (ibid: 74). Wang (2007, 136) is more emphatic by arguing that the consumer orientation of the middle class is in a tremendous transition, from traditional frugality to modern consumerism. Wang (2006) summarises the tensions that have shaped the consumption patterns of the middle class in such a transitional society: between (1) extravagance and frugality, (2) passion and rationality, (3) sovereignty and passiveness, (4) high culture and popular culture, and (5) self-identity and social identity. These arguments on consumer orientation help to construct a theoretical framework to analyse the consumer culture in China. However, they are not elaborated sufficiently. For instance, questions such as how the new values are tempered by traditional values, what the relations are between the tensions, and how the middle class cope with the tensions need to be resolved. Wang Ning (2007; 2012) further examines mechanisms and consequences of the new consumption patterns from an institutionalism paradigm. He argues that the state plays a key role in stimulating people’s material aspiration for the purpose of economic development. Due to a productionist institutional setting, however, consumers have been directed to overspending rather than the real improvement of their life quality.
These studies illustrate the context in which the contemporary middle class is situated. The policy of consumption stimulation should be partly responsible for the conspicuous and excessive consumption in contemporary China. However, rationing and management of material goods by the state is no longer the prior structure of the consumer market. Consumers have become more autonomous and ‘the justification of taste’ is required: they cannot always feel confident in their taste if they lack a class identity or culture as a reference. However, a common problem in many of the existing studies is the taken-for-granted influence of the Western culture1 and the attribution of the new consumer orientation to ‘consumerism’. It would be arbitrary to regard the new set of consumer orientation in China as imported or diffused from the West. In addition, there is no empirical evidence showing that the new motives and orientations are homogenous with ‘consumerism’ or ‘hedonism’, both having originated and developed in the West.
This paper will provide a comprehensive analysis of the underlying consumer orientation: what is it and how does it work? ‘Consumer orientation’ here refers to distinct or particular rationales and motives for purchasing and using certain material goods and services. Through an examination of middle class interviewees’ justifications of their own tastes, this paper will reveal their consumer orientation. The following section will explain why people’s justifications of their tastes are important for understanding this consumer orientation. …… image from：12371.cn Click the link below to access the Full Text and PDF |
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