Consuming China Approaches to Cultural Change in Contemporary China [Paperback]

Post-Mao China has been characterized in literature and the media as a burgeoning consumer society. Consuming Chinainvestigates this characterization by examining the cultural significance of consumption and consumerism in the Peoples Republic of China today. In questioning the notion of consumption, this impressive work suggests that it is not simply a symptom of economic reform within China neither a product of the emergence and transformation of contemporary Chinese capitalism. Rather, the essays offer a new perspective on Chinese consumption by focusing on more than just consumerism, looking at the practices of consumption in relation to different manifestations of social and cultural change.

Drawing on case studies from Taiwan, Hong Kong and the Peoples Republic of China, Consuming Chinaaffords a greater understanding of the practice of Chinese consumption and will appeal to China scholars and anthropologists, and to those with an interest in cultural and gender studies.

1. Introduction: Consumption and Cultural Change in Contemporary China  2. Conjuring Goods, Identities and Cultures  3. Deception, Corruption and the Chinese Ritual Economy  4. The Emergence of Consumer Rights: Legal Protection of the Consumer in the PRC  5. Powers of Imagination: The Role of the Consumer in China's Silent Media Revolution  6. Changing Tastes in Guangzhou: Restaurant Writings in the Late 1990s  7. On (not) Eating the Dead: Reader's Digest of a Chinese Funerary Taboo  8. Images of the Chinese: Photography and Consumerism in 1990s Hangzhou  9. Fashions and Feminine Consumption  10. Wong Kar-wai's Sensuous Histories  11. The Consuming or the Consumed? Virtual Hmong in China  12. Afterword: Reflections on China, Consumption and Cultural Change