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Patterns of Middle Class Consumption in India and China comes as a fresh addition to the growing interest in the long neglected sphere of urban studies. The book provides a mine of information on state and society in the two countries and should be essential reading for all engaged with varied reflections on contemporary urban society.
This book, set against the background of accounts of globalisation, aims to figure out the consumer orientation of the middle class in contemporary China, in particular how the new elements in consumer orientation operate in the Chinese context. It focuses on the contemporary middle class. Data used in the book are taken from national representative surveys conducted in the recent decade and also from 30 interviews with middle class people in Beijing. The book focuses on the consumption patterns from everyday consumption, taste and material culture. It highlights consumers' self-referential orientations: the pursuit of pleasure, tempered by considerations regarding comfort, is a significant form of aesthetic justification. Living within one's means i.e. keeping a balance between expenditure and income is the main moral justification. Consumers' orientations draw on a new set of elements, conceptualised in this research as 'the orientation toward personal pleasure and comfort'. This orientation is shaped by social conventions, traditional values and the metropolitan context. The findings challenge the stereotype of the Chinese 'new rich' and the one-dimensional pictures of tendencies towards either conspicuous display or frugality.
In Driving toward Modernity, Jun Zhang ethnographically explores the entanglement between the rise of the automotive regime and emergence of the middle class in South China. Focusing on the Pearl River Delta, one of the nation's wealthiest regions, Zhang shows how private cars have shaped everyday middle-class sociality, solidarity, and subjectivity, and how the automotive regime has helped make the new middle classes of the PRC. By carefully analyzing how physical and social mobility intertwines, Driving toward Modernity paints a nuanced picture of modern Chinese life, comprising the continuity and rupture as well as the structure and agency of China's great transformation.
Globalisation has expanded the size of the global middle class. This expansion will change consumption patterns and shift the balance of spending power to middle-income economies. Rapid growth rates of the middle class in China and India have played a decisive role in creating the middle-income bulge. By 2030 the global middle class has been projected to grow to two billion. It is of note that a large middle class was also created during the first era of globalisation.
With respect to the developing and threshold economies, it is no longer the poor who are the only focus of media attention. Today, the new middle classes are about to take centre stage, too. With their lifestyles and attitudes, the new middle classes are considered to be both the products as well as the promoters of globalization. They are a highly heterogeneousgroup in socio-economicterms as well as in habits 1 and preferences, including their societal role as consumers and citizens. The ?rst wave of scholarly and political attention can be traced back to the mid-nineties. The focal point was surprise and unease about indubitable symptoms of consumerism which, until then had been seen as a characteristic of the richest western societies. However, since the nineties, consumerism has run rampant in - velopingcountriestoo.Thishasparticularlybeennotedwithrespecttotheemerging middle classes in South East Asia. The “will to consume seemed inexhaustible, and appetites insatiable. This rage to consume [...] was both celebrated and feared by political leadersand other social/moralgatekeepers,who beganto condemnthe p- cess as ‘Westernization’ and even ‘westoxi?cation”’ (Chua 2000: xii). Ever since, the debate about the lifestyles of the new middle classes and their role in society has gained momentum.
China and India - the two emerging economies with growing influence the world over - are undergoing profound social and cultural changes. China introduced a variety of economic and political reforms in 1978, and India initiated reforms in 1991. These shifts produced significantly higher rates of growth than witnessed during the preceding decades. The rapid pace of economic growth in both countries has transformed their economies in many ways, however economic transformation does not occur in isolation. Culture and social institutions also influence, and are influenced by, the processes of economic change. This book offers a comparative understanding of these two great nations and their diverse social and cultural realities. The book's contributions focus on a wide variety of topics concerning the contemporary societies of each country, such as: the middle classes and consumption patterns * the processes of migrations * labor markets * regional inequalities * housing * gender bias and discrimination * religious life * ethnic minorities.