This document summarizes a conference on consumerism and the emerging middle class in India and China. It provides context on the economic growth and liberalization in both countries leading to the rise of consumption-oriented lifestyles among parts of the population. The conference will address the cultural analysis of consumption patterns in both countries, how they are embedded in class habits and politics of distinction. Topics discussed will include the dream world of mass consumption through cinema and advertising, consumption of luxury goods and their copies, leisure industries, and new conceptions of gender and sexuality. The document outlines several papers to be presented on related themes such as the tensions between newly affluent and aspiring social groups, the reality of the Chinese middle class, the

1. Consumerism and the Emerging Middle Class:
Comparative Perspectives from India and China
IIAS/CERI/CSH/ICS/IIC
India International Centre, New Delhi, India
7-9 November, 2005
China and India have been going through processes of liberalization and globalization in the
last few decades, and so become obvious objects of comparison in terms of scale and
historical depth. They are the world’s two fastest growing economies and number a third of
the world’s population. Economic growth in both societies makes it possible for substantial
parts of the population to transform their lifestyle from frugal to consumption-oriented.
While attention is mostly given to the production side of the economy - in which India
provides services and China manufactured goods to the global market - the consumption
side in the national markets is not always sufficiently taken into account. It is only recently
that a globally-oriented capitalist consumer culture is truly manifesting itself – at least in the
middle classes - in India and China. With the growth of the economy, there is increasing
penetration of capital and improved technologies of communication, and rarely has the
cultural dimension of human action been directly addressed as the core resource for
production and consumption.
The cultural analysis of consumption in India and China is what the conference will address.
The changing economy affects the entire dream world of mass consumption, including
cinema, advertising, luxury goods and their cheap copies. Consumption patterns are deeply
embedded in class habits and politics of distinction. As such the art world and the
conservation of architecture are part of these new emergent lifestyles. Leisure and the
enjoyment of life become available to new groups in society and give rise to important
industries, such as tourism. Questions of authenticity and cultural reproduction are central to
what Arjun Appadurai (1986) has called ‘the social life of things’. Since consumption is so
much fuelled by desire, it is also necessary to analyze new conceptions of gender and
sexuality as integral to the conference theme.
Thresholds of inequity: Managing the new social tensions
between affluence and aspiration
Satish DESHPANDE, Department of Sociology, Delhi University
Scholars, policy makers and politicians in both China and India have been concerned about
the emergence of a new kind of tension between ‘recently affluent’ and ‘recently aspiring’
social groups. In both countries there is a sense in which the currently critical contradiction is
not so much between the very rich and the very poor, but between those immediately below
and above these groups. Broadly speaking, the ‘affluent’ and the ‘aspiring’ may be described
as the extreme ends of the ‘intermediate strata’, i.e., in popular terms, those who have risen
higher than the ‘upper-middle’ class and those who are seeking entry into the ‘lower-middle’
class. This paper outlines the contours of this new antagonism in the Indian context and
offers some preliminary statistical evidence on its extent and regional variation.
Social status in India has always had a strong relational component – what matters is not so
much one’s absolute position, but the ‘social distance’ that separates us from significant
others. What is new about such conflicts is that they are occurring in a radically transformed

2. social, political and economic context. The larger ideologies that served to dampen conflict
(such as nationalism, development or even socialism) are now unable to perform their
palliative and pacificatory role. Moreover, the antagonists themselves are new groups in the
sense that they have been produced by hitherto unfamiliar ‘globalized’ processes in an
unprecedentedly media-saturated social environment.
This paper provides rough approximations of the ‘class distance’ separating the affluent from
the aspiring by way of consumption expenditure data from the National Sample Survey
Organization. Despite the well known limitation of using consumption expenditure in
estimating inequalities, the NSSO data offers a rare opportunity to compare ‘class distance’
systematically across regions and across time. This allows us to build a broad picture of the
possible trends in social tension and the issues that may be raised by attempts to manage it.
Chinese Middle Class: Reality or Illusion?
Prof. Xiaohong ZHOU, Nanjing University
In the process of modernization around the world, the change in class and social
stratification, especially in terms of the rising numbers of the middle class, has been a
universal significant phenomenon. The conditions in societies like America and Europe in the
nineteenth century were such, and similar conditions are now seen in East Asian societies
including China in the twentieth century. The rising middle class has been a world topic in the
post-modern context. In the background of East Asian modernization and the reform and
opening of China, this paper analysis the emergency and social structure of the Chinese
middle class, and points out that the Chinese middle class is not only a product of
industrialization and modernization, but also and even more important, a result of social
transformation. Owing to traits of modern Chinese politics, the Chinese middle class is
evidently both a vanguard in consumption and a rearguard in politics. At the end of this
treatise, the author also discusses the relationship between the rising middle class and future
of Chinese societies in terms of economical development, social structure and ideology in
China.
Yeh Dil Maange More … Ads on TV and Consumer Choices
in a Global City
Shoma MUNSHI, International Institute for Asian Studies, Leyden
The spread of globalization and India’s steady climb towards joining the ranks of market
economies has spurred new occupations and higher salaries for domestic help and those
who work in small businesses. This paper examines the television-watching habits of women
who work as domestic help and beauty parlour workers in the colonies of Sheikh Sarai and
Navjivan Vihar in south Delhi. They live either in small rented accommodations of their own
in the nearby Savitri Nagar and Jagdamba camp, or in the quarters allotted for domestic help
in Navjivan Vihar houses. The analysis grows out of ethnographic research over the past two
and a half years of time spent with these women – both when they are at work and also
visiting their homes. Salaries for working women like these have increased over the past few
years, and they now have a certain amount of disposable income - some of which is spent
on luxuries like a television set at first, that is an easy and monetarily cheap source of
entertainment, thanks to satellite TV. This exposes them to a whole new world - a global
world - and introduces them to previously unknown ideas and products. My work investigates
how exposure to satellite TV, and particularly advertising on TV, affects the behavior, lifestyle
choices and spending habits of these women. It looks at how buying and consuming these
products allows the women to feel a part of big city and global culture and allows them to
exercise consumer choice for the first time in their lives.

3. Mein, Tum, or Advertising: How brands put the 'class' in
India's middle class
Jatin Atre, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania
The 'middle class' is a fascinatingly flexible concept. In a country where only 2% of the
population earns more than $2000 - a class that represents the 'middle' cannot be defined
merely by income groups. Its defining criteria have to be constructed through universally
visible cues that indicate both social standing and mobility. This becomes more critical in an
economy that is metamorphosing from a primordially caste-based to an increasingly class-
based one. Striking down past indicators of status and constructing new ones is best done
through associating particular images with products (e.g. the idea of being exclusive by
wearing a high-fashion brand with low availability like Versace.) This paper explores how (1)
advertising in India focuses on creating brands that have class based associations (2) how
this may have an unexpected effect of equalizing Indian society by providing the possibility of
'moving up' and thereby antiquating castes and (3) what is predictably in store for a society
after such a transformation.
The first part of the paper introduces six sample ads that are currently airing on Indian
television. It tries to understand these ads in terms of literature on branding and how ad-
brand associations are created. Using theories of social-identity in consumer behavior these
brands are elaborated in terms of the class and imagined 'community' they construct. Such a
reincarnation of society born out of consumerism is characterized by two features (1)
demanding customers who strive for better products and (2) mobility through consumption
and status conferral based on the 'merit' awarded by purchasing power. Thus, after this the
middle class fails to remain a figment of demographic demarcations and becomes a
destination that everyone who has purchasing power can pay to reach. Finally, the paper
draws upon societies that have already undergone such transformations, and proposes that
in the future the Lake Woebegone Effect would destroy the concept of advertising aspirations
of reaching the middle class and initiate the marketing of mass affluence.
In sum, the paper shows how the transformation of traditional Indian society is taking place
through the advent of brands that raze down castes in favor of raising classes, and why this
change may not be so bad.
Digital Media and Mutating Moralities
Shohini GHOSH, Jamia Milla University, Delhi
Abstract
The emergence of new digital media technologies, in the late 20th
and early 21st
Century, has
created registers of visuality along with newer avenues of access, surveillance and
reportage. It is now possible to collect and capture ‘visible evidence’ from seemingly
impossible locations and penetrate deeper into public and private spaces. On the other hand,
the endless ‘mutability’ of the digital image, through simulation and image compositing,
makes believability infinitely more difficult. The present historical moment is therefore marked
by a paradox wherein the desire for acquisition of ‘visible evidence’ is simultaneously
accompanied by digital media's ability to modify and mutate those very images. Through a
discussion of the recent media controversies around the use of hidden cameras, the paper
attempts to understand the new moralities that emerge at the intersection of new media
technologies and (un)conventional sexualities.

4. Transnational and Transcultural Aspects of the Circulation
and Consumption of East Asian Television Drama
Chua Beng Huat, National University of Singapore
For media industries the greater East Asian region constitutes a highly integrated market for
media cultural products. Movies, television programmes and pop music are produced and
distributed throughout the entire region, flowing and crossing porous national and cultural
boundaries routinely. The latest is what has been dubbed the ‘Korean Wave’.
The region can be subdivided in different ways, each with its circulation and consumption
circuits. The most obvious subdivision is the subset of ethnic-Chinese predominant locations
– HK, PRC, Taiwan and Singapore- which can be designated ‘Pop Culture China’, with long
standing international traffic in media cultural products. For example, historically, as
predominantly a consumption location Singapore always has a steady import of media
products from the other locations and, recently has also contributed finances, entertainers
and artistes to Pop Culture China.
On the other hand, in spite of Korean government’s ban on importation as part of
postcolonial protest, Japanese media products flowed freely through different not-too-
secretive circuits, including via information and communication technologies. Since the lifting
of the ban, in 1998, there have been attempts at co-production of television drama
programmes, as a vehicle for cross-national and cross cultural exchanges. There are
evidence that attitudinal changes among the Korean and Japanese consumers towards each
other as a result of television consumption.
Thirdly, there is the flow of Japanese and Korean media products into Pop Culture China,
especially television drama. Such programmes are dubbed and subtitled into either
Cantonese or Mandarin at the first import location and then re-exported to consumers in the
other locations.
The concern of this paper is to not only map the circulation paths of the media products in
East Asia but also the effect of linguistic translation on consumption of imported
programmes.
Television, Sexual Experience and Middle Class Identity in
China
Jacqueline Elfick, Hong Kong Polytechnic University
For the past six years, the middle class in China has had access to foreign content television
programmes in the form of satellite television and DVDs. Foreign programmes with explicit
sexual themes have become common in large cities and have inspired local imitations. This
paper examines the role of television in establishing the consumption of sexual experience
as a marker of middle class identity in China. It is based on fieldwork among university
students and middle-class professionals conducted in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen
between 2001 and 2005. New wealth and a less stringent moral control by the state have
made it possible for individuals to connect with a transnational consumer identity. This paper
argues that within this identity, sex is seen as just one of the numerous experiences available
for consumption. What is commonly viewed as burgeoning promiscuity brought on by years
of sexual repression by the state is in many cases a manifestation of an emerging social
identity that places great value on the consumption of new experiences. This paper also
examines greater sexual freedom for women within the context of popular public morality and
the state's agenda concerning sexual behaviour.

5. A Requiem for Songpan: Once more about China’s
civilization mission
Dr. Nyiri Pál, Applied Anthropology, Macquarie University, Australia
Using fieldwork in a Chinese town that first developed as a spontaneous destination for
Western and Chinese backpackers but was recently turned into a proper 'scenic spot', the
paper contributes to the discussion on the politics of 'civilization' and 'population quality' in
contemporary Chinese governmentality, and addresses the role of tourism in China in turning
both tourists and tourees into 'modern' consumer-citizens.
“New Area” and Petty Bourgeoisie: Nostalgia, Globalization
and Consumerism in Shanghai
Dr. Bao YAMING, Institute of Literature, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, China
“New Area” (Xintiandi) is a name of a place in Shanghai, referring to a newly-founded space
of consumption and entertainment in the downtown area (the former French Concession),
and now it is the most attractive and most popular and fascinating place both to tourists and
local people in Shanghai. There are many bars, cafes, restaurants, nightclubs, shops selling
arts and all kinds of fine/fancy products, a luxurious cinema, etc., and most owners are from
places outside Mainland China. The architectural style of New Area is a blending or mixture
of global elements with the local residential house, viz. Shikumen. The commercial success
of New Area creates an enchanting myth of consumerism.
Shikumen is a unique kind of residential house most characteristic of Shanghai local
architectural style. With the development of the city and the reconstruction of the old areas,
Shikumen as residential house diminishes gradually in nowadays Shanghai. “New Area”, the
new commercial center, with a resemblance of the typical old local residential block, caters
for the fashion or trend of the nostalgia for the past and old Shanghai, and at the same time
inspires newcomers’ imagination of the old Shanghai. An atmosphere of the old Shanghai is
apparently created by the material stuffs at “New Area” in nowadays Shanghai.
The decades of the 1920s and 1930s, specifically from 1927 to 1937 was the golden age for
the Chinese bourgeoisie. During that decade, the image of Shanghai as a metropolitan city
and at the same time also a cosmopolitan city had many touches of foreign “colors”.
Nostalgia in nowadays Shanghai conveys a strong sense of consumerism during the revival
of the city. The problem of the nostalgia for the old Shanghai indicates in certain degree the
complicate relationship between history and the present reality. The fashion of such kind of
nostalgia somehow attempts to revive or reconstruct the “sensibility” of the old Shanghai and
to re-interpret the city’s history and to successfully demonstrate the tastes and power of the
petty bourgeoisie in the form of consumerism fashion.
“New Area” is a great attraction to “Petty bourgeoisie”(xiaozi) in Shanghai. “Petty
bourgeoisie” in nowadays China especially in Shanghai, refers to the group of young people
who enjoy the way of life of the already known bourgeoisie in the history. They are mostly
middle-class, and many of them have global professional background. “Petty bourgeoisie” at
the same time are the group of people who care greatly about the local resources of leisure
or enjoyment in life. e.g. They frequent the consumption space in “New Area”.
“New Area” as a space of leisure and entertainment exemplifies a combination of
globalization and localization through consumerism. Globalization as a paradigm of change,
i.e. the change of the status quo in China since the 1990s, gives consumerism a dominant
position in contemporary Shanghai.

6. Tourism, Culture and Gender Relations in Yunnan, China
Govind Kelkar, IFAD-UNIFEM Gender Mainstreaming Programme in Asia, New Delhi
Research on the indigenous societies that are likely to be impacted by tourism has tended to
focus on economic development. Only a few mention the role of women or pay attention to
gender relations. (Kelkar and Nathan 1991; Kelkar, Nathan and Walter 2003; Bosu Mullick
2000; Sarin 2000; Bolles 1997; Vivan, Kothari and Hall 1994). This invisibility compounds
patriarchy as the invisible mediator in reproducing idealized images of the past and conceals
the unequal benefits to be enjoyed from many tourism endeavors. This paper explores
changes in gender relations as a result of economic development through tourism. I look at
changes in gender relations in indeginous societies of matrilineal Mosuo and patrilineal Naxi
and the current situation of development of tourism as a leading industry, where women play
a significant role as workers and local managers, but their social, economic and political
position have come under increasing stress.
With the increase of income-earning opportunities as a consequence of tourism, and
technological change women have been freed from the hard life of collecting and selling
firewood. The example of the tourist village of Luoshui shows that when people have other
channels of earning incomes, they demand less of local forests as a direct source of
livelihood, which is obviously advantageous to the protection of forests, and in turn promotes
the development of the ecological service function of forests, However, it is also true that
demands for firewood and timber are merely displaced to other, non-local forests, just as
tourism-related social ills, such as women in commercial sex, are displaced to areas outside
the local community. At the same time, those households that have not benefited as much
from the new sources of income have greater difficulty in meeting their fuel and other timber
needs, as they are restrained from gathering wood from the nearby forests. The overall ban
on logging, instituted in 1998, has also led to a fall in income of forest-dependent
communities (more so Lisu and Yi than Mosuo and Naxi).
Liberalization of social relations as a consequence of economic reform policies and tourism,
however, is much less seen in the case of gender relations. Men have taken over the social
position of women in Naxi and Mosuo society, and women now have put their ecological
wisdom and energy into services related to entertainment of tourists and family affairs. In our
interviews, men acknowledge that women-managed forest plots do better than those
managed by men. However, women’s representation in forest management committees or in
political governance, whether at the village or higher levels, is usually non-existent. There is
a growing tendency for men, even in matrilineal Mosuo society, to dominate important
functions and positions of power.
The embedded violence of trade of women’s bodies does raise the question: What has been
done to change women’s gender identity of subordination, including that of sexual
subordination? Have the progressive, gender sensitive policies attempted to use the threat
point to dismantle patriarchal powers and structures that deny poor, rural and indigenous
women control over their lives?
The women’s movements in the south as well as the north seem to be divided over the issue
of sex work and sex trade. I do not wish to discuss these positions of concern here. I,
however, would like to say that the only way to understand this particular form of trade in
women’s bodies is to understand this practice as an aspect of masculine domination. The
masculine domination legitimates a relationship of domination by embedding entitlement to
women’s sexual service in a biological nature of man. We know by now, largely as a result of
feminist analysis, that the instituting of such a masculinity in men’s bodies is social
construction. We are faced with the challenge to institutionalized strategies to efface the
masculine power and “turn the strength of the strong against them” (Bourdieu, 2001, 32)
What this means is that we have to take account of just and equality-based gender relations
in policies and practices of economic development. This calls attention to halting the
emerging patriarchy through the tourism industry in both Mosuo and Naxi societies, through

7. measures like: (1) women’s adequate representation in governance of their communities and
resources; (2) development of capabilities (i.e. education, management and negotiating
skills) of rural, poor women to manage resources and the tourism industry at management
and higher levels; and (3) redefining of gender roles with a positive analysis of cultural
systems. What is required is to check the monopoly over access to knowledge and
management of resources. The concept of male headship of the household is to be replaced
with the policy and concept of dual-headed household system with women’s unmediated
ownership, control and management of natural resources, including household assets.
The Public Display of Private Sexuality: The Contradictions
of the New Spaces of Consumption
Shilpa PHADKE, PUKAR, Mumbai
The paper is located in the new spaces of consumption and display in Mumbai: malls, coffee-
shops and nightclubs and focuses on the ways in which both class and heterosexuality are
constructed in these contexts. It examines some of the assumptions of modernity that are
implicit in women’s presence in these spaces as consumers and shop-assistants. The paper
explores the new contexts in which lingerie, particularly women’s lingerie (but also men’s) are
now packaged and sold in shopping malls and exclusive shops. It places these against
earlier supposedly more discreet forms of selling and examines the meaning underlying the
apparent public displays of sexuality through the demonstration effect of lingerie. Using the
window and mall displays and the advertising of lingerie, I argue the market-led appearance
of lingerie from the metaphorical closet serves, not to unsettle the public-private boundaries
that circumscribe female sexuality, but rather, to reinforce them. This paper draws on
research conducted as part of the PUKAR Gender & Space project.
Moral Consumption: Among the Veg. Tacos; and Baby
Pizzas, Shekhar and Monica Make Silent, Unsatisfactory,
Love.
Sanjay SRIVASTAVA, Deakin University, Melbourne
The opening up of the Indian economy has also led to an opening up of the body, with
sexuality as the site of this other liberalization. As the economy is increasingly imagined in
terms of flows of goods, foreign exchange remittances, Indians traveling abroad, Non
Resident Indians (NRIs) visiting home and a globalised televisual traffic in images and ideas,
the body too has become imbricated in the semiotics of passage. This paper explores these
issues through focussing on 'footpath pornography', Hindi language ‘women magazines’, and
their readers.
Over the past decade or so, sexuality has become a hot topic for discussion and debate
within mainstream magazines such as Grhasobha and Grhalakshmi. The discussion locates
the sexual culture of these magazines in the wider context of consumption and the making of
class identities. It introduces the idea of middle-class moral consumption that ties together
contemporary discourses on sexuality, consumerism, and a ‘controllable’ modernity,
suggesting that, within the interstices of the home, these magazines have created sexualized
spaces that, in turn, locate its readership in other extra-domestic spaces. The emergence of
these sexualised spaces is itself linked to an implicit debate about modernity, consumption,
and the contours of middle-class identity in urban India. The discussion explores the multiple
meanings of 'middle-class' through investigating the ways in which the sexuality,
consumerism, and the consuming woman, have become sites for defining a 'truly' Indian
middle-class.

8. Consuming art in middle-class China
Puay-peng HO, Department of Architecture, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Middle-class China is optimistic, liberated, fun-seeking, and wealthy. These businessmen
and professionals would go to great length to have a share of the burgeoning art and
architectural creation. In return, artists and architects responded with works that reflected the
spirit of the age. Cult status had been attained by artists, architects and architectural
developers who attracted attention both within China and internationally. At the same time,
international architects had been engaged in the design of many public buildings in China
that helped to create an ambience of globalization and setting the standard for outstanding
design. This paper will study the dynamics of the local and international artists/architects
played out in China in the last five years. The dialogue between local artists and international
audience took place not only in art galleries of Beijing and Shanghai, but also Hong Kong,
New York and London and at the Venice biennale. Successes at these international venues
would ensure successes in home market. As a result, the taste and hitherto unknown artistic
orientations of these clients are shaped and nurtured by the avant-garde artists and
architects.
Apart from the lively art scene in contemporary China that is patronized by a small select
group of new social elites, there are also more experimental attempts at the art, seen in the
special art zone named “Factory 798” in Beijing. So apart from the high-priced artistic
creations, there are also the more affordable and exciting works of the less-established
artists. In the absence of a mature art market in China, what sells and what don’t remain very
uncertain. This paper will also explore the nature of this pattern of consumption. There may
be no adequate explanation for the current situation; however, the paper will at least provide
a glimpse of the phenomenon.
History and Heritage Woven in the New Urban Fabric: the
Changing Landscapes of Delhi's 'First City', 1997-2005
Anand TANEJA, SARAI, Delhi
The 'First City of Delhi' is an apt title for an area identified variously as Mehrauli, Lal Kot and
Qila Rai Pithora; and widely regarded to be the first of mediaeval Delhi's seven cities. This
area of South Delhi has seen continuous urban and suburban settlement since the twelfth
century; and the areas within the perimeter of the 13th-14th century city wall (vestiges of
which can still be seen at many places) include the contemporary 'urban villages' of
Saidulajab, Lado Sarai and Mehrauli; the modern residential colonies of Saket and Press
Enclave and the Qutub Institutional Area.
The urban landscape of this area has seen continuous change over several centuries,
accelerated by rapid population growth and governmental planning discourse in the second
half of the twentieth century. However, the changes in the urban landscape and land use
patterns become particularly rapid and marked from the mid nineties onwards. To cite five
examples -
1997 saw the conversion of the Anupam cinema hall in the Saket Community Centre into
PVR Anupam 4, India's first multiplex, which posited itself from the beginning as an elite
space and successfully contested a municipal directive on the reservation of a quota of seats
at a minimum price.
In 2000, a few hundred metres away from the multiplex, The Delhi Development Authority
(DDA) inaugurated Delhi's first 'public' golf course; the Qutab Golf Course on the lands of the
village of Lado Sarai.
In 2002, the then Home Minister LK Advani inaugurated the Qila Rai Pithora Cultural
Complex built by the DDA and unveiled a statue of Prithviraj Chauhan, the last 'Hindu' ruler
of Delhi, remembered as a hero who died fighting the 'Muslim invaders'. This complex has

9. been built along a part of the extant walls of Qila Rai Pithora, and is adjacent to the Qutab
Golf Course.
In 2003, the Delhi Tourism inaugurated the twenty acre Garden of Five Senses on lands of
the village of Saidulajab, just south of Saket and Lado Sarai. This garden has abstract
sculpture, formal landscaping and ticketed entry; and is being promoted as a cultural centre
by the DTDC, and as venue for concerts and other cultural happenings.
In 2005, INTACH (The Indian National Trust For Art and Cultural Heritage), in collaboration
with the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and Delhi Tourism, started heritage walks in
the Mehrauli Archaeological Park; an area which is also used as a common ground by the
residents of Mehrauli village. The walks have been targeted at English speaking middle class
citizens of Delhi, and the residents of Mehrauli have been referred to as 'encroachers' and
'vandals' during the course of these walks.
All the five examples above have been made possible by active intervention by various
governmental bodies, promoting the governmental vision of a new ideal citizen - the citizen
as consumer. In this discourse, heritage also becomes a commodity, to be sanitised and
packaged for the ideal consumer, who is also marked by class and religion. Former Urban
Development Minister Jagmohan's stated aim in the building of the Qila Rai
Pithora Culural Compex was 'to weave history and heritage in the new urban fabric that is
being presently spun in Delhi.'
This paper will look at the processes through which this imagination of the new urban fabric,
woven with history and heritage was carried out in the specific cases highlighted above, and
at the contestations, contradictions and continuities involved. It will also highlight how this
imagination of new urbanism and its ideal citizen is not restricted to the ideology of any one
political party but is a vision shared across political divides - implemented through many
regime changes, and often antagonistic governments at centre and state. Engaging with
historian Sunil Kumar's earlier work on Saidulajab, this paper will also explore the linkages of
this new urbanism and its politics of heritage with earlier histories of the acquisition of land
and the altering of memory.
Healthcare and Consumerism: The Corporate Hospitals in
Delhi
Bertrand LEFEBVRE, University of Rouen – Centre de Sciences Humaines (Delhi)
The Indian healthcare system is undergoing major transformations over the past two
decades. The economic liberalization, the continuous decrease of public investment in
healthcare has created a new frame in the supply of healthcare. In this renewed context, the
corporate hospitals try to tap the middle class market by offering high quality treatment and
first class amenities to their patients. Considering healthcare infrastructure and the
landscape they produce (both material and perceptual) as a revelatory of discourses,
practices and values, we assess that the hospital is the most efficient vehicle to promote
consumerism in healthcare. If we consider consumerism as an ideology, then the corporate
hospital is like the manifesto in the field of healthcare. Through place marketing, corporate
hospitals are promoting new ways of considering health and are creating confusion among
the patients by mixing different symbols and signs from the consumption society. We will first
present the corporate hospital and how they build and market themselves with a true sense
of distinction from the rest of the health system. Then we will focus on their location’s
strategy to insert themselves in the new landscapes of consumption. Finally we see will how
a retroactive process is at work between discourse and materiality in the Indian healthcare
system.

10. Middle Class Status. The Aspirations and Attitudes of
University Students in China Today
Ravni THAKUR, Department of East Asian Studies, Delhi University
China has changed considerably from the left wing paradise it once claimed to be and this
contrast is most visible in the aspirations and attitudes of university students in China today.
This paper is based on interviews that I carried out with fifty students in Sichuan University in
the month of October 2005. I have chosen to focus on youth because these students not only
come largely from middle class families, as my data reveals, but also aspire to have middle
class life styles. They are also born after economic liberalisation started and are therefore,
not encumbered by the weight of Marxist rhetoric or ideology. I have also deliberately chosen
Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, since it is still a developing city and has not had access to
the kind of FDI led development and western influences that have seen south china and
cities like Beijing and Shanghai change into largely cosmopolitan international cities. Its
students too, are largely drawn from the province itself although some of those interviewed
came from other interior provinces.
Universities today are middle class havens not only because education in China is not free or
subsidized any more. A BA course, that lasts 3 years costs 4,000 yuan (nb: 1 Yuan = 5
Indian rupees) in terms of annual tuition fees, 1000 yuan for boarding another 1000 for books
etc. and approximately another 4000 yuan per year to live. Thus a student needs around 10-
12000 yuan to enter a university. No scholarships are available at this level, although
students can get bank loans, but this again depends on the specialisation and the kind of
payback guarantees that a student is able to provide. This puts the cost of university degrees
out of the reach of most peasants and workers. An MA course, which lasts 4 years, costs
8,000 yuan in annual tuition fees and around 4000 for living. At the MA level scholarships are
available, but these are merit and not economic based scholarships. Thus, it is easy to
speculate that university education is now essentially becoming an elite based education.
Based on the definition of Middle Class (zhongchan jiecheng) provided by the students
themselves, three criteria were outlined for identifying this class. 1) economic criteria alone.
This is a monthly income of between 3000-5000 yuan. 2) Life style criteria such as one's own
house or apartment, a car and all the necessary consumer luxuries such as washing
machine, refrigerator, music system, computer etc. 3) Social respect and access to leisure
activities like going to the cinema etc. I have subsequently, used their own criteria to assess
their family backgrounds and aspirations.
My paper is divided into three broad sections based on the questions asked. The first deals
with their own family back-grounds and their own life expectations. The second section deals
with their leisure activities and consumer behaviour. And the third section deals with their
attitudes towards China and what they identify as problems that China faces. In the first
section, it is interesting to note the jobs that are identified as having both cultural and
economic capital. These are essentially the same as middle class and upper middle class
professions all over the world, such as government bureaucrats, university professors,
lawyers doctors and economic managers of private or public enterprises. Again, where their
consumption patterns and desires are concerned, one again notices a certain similarity with
international trends such as travel, art and cinema. Here the gender of the student takes
precedence. While both liked travel, the consumption patterns of women and men were
decidedly different. While men spent time on games and on the Internet, women spent time
and money on fashion and art. In the third section, the most interesting point that emerges is
how not a single student interviewed had any interest in Marxist ideology, and this despite
the fact that a political class (Zhengzhi ke) is compulsory from middle school right through to
their BA course. It in fact has to be passed. However, while talking about their attitude to the
Party, it was found that several were already members of the Party and pointed out that this
really helped job prospects, especially if one wanted a government job and also provided
extra social status. Those who were not interested in joining the Party or were not Party
members were more interested in either going abroad for higher studies or finding jobs in the

11. private sector. All the students interviewed pointed out two main problems that China faces.
The first being corruption and therefore the need for political reform and the second being
economic disparities that are becoming more visible daily.
To further identify a clearly defined middle class habitus, I have also used interviews with
non-university youth, especially those involved in the service sector such as shop assistants,
hostel workers and internet cafe workers to show that in China today, there is a definite idea
of a middle class life style and today's university youth aspire most whole heartedly to
acquire it.
Rewriting the Code: Software Professionals and the
Reconstitution of Indian Middle Class Identity
Carol UPADHYA, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore
Indian software professionals have a social and symbolic significance beyond their numbers
as harbingers of India’s future in the now promising era of liberalisation and globalisation.
They represent the ‘new middle class’ that has been constructed through public discourses
and images as a ‘consuming class’, as well as a new generation of transnational Indians.
While this group appears to embrace the new ‘ideology of globalising consumerism’, their
construction of middle class identity also hinges on a critical discourse about consumption,
which sets up an opposition between the material benefits of working in the IT industry and
the social sacrifices they have to make. In the context of rapid social transformations brought
about by their work, software professionals cling to a sense of self based on an unaltered set
of ‘core values’. As transnational subjects, they also face the dilemma of maintaining Indian
identity while working in the global economy. This dilemma is resolved partially by
reconstituting Indian culture through the consumption of commodified images and discourses
that circulate within the transnational Indian cultural field. In this process, the family is
iconisised as a symbol of Indian culture and tradition, in opposition to the individualism of the
west, even as their own social practices are becoming fragmented. Another solution is to
embrace a new Indian-global identity and refurbished patriotism that accepts the hegemony
of ‘global culture’ while invoking a new and assertive India as a major player on the world
stage. Thus, the class status and identity of transnational Indian IT professionals is produced
more through consumption of ideologies of the family and nation, and of the idea of Indian
culture, than through consumption of new consumer goods and lifestyles. The
transformations of identity and sociality observed in this class represent a rewriting of the
code of culture, as older symbols and tropes of middle class-ness and Indian-ness, family
and nation, are appropriated and reconstituted to contain a very different cultural content.
The imaginary construction of a class: the Chinese middle
strata in an era of growth and stability
Jean-Louis ROCCA, CERI-CNRS (Paris) - Tsinghua University (Beijing)
This paper takes place in a long term research project focusing on life styles of three social
strata : middle « class », migrant workers and the old working class. The central idea is that,
according to Max Weber and Michel Foucault, the concept of « social class » is a mainly
imaginary phenomenon linking objective conditions and subjective perceptions. Some groups
of people define an ethos which constitutes a guideline for behaviours and actions.
Individuals which desire to belong to this group have to respect this framework.
Concerning middle « class » and this conference, I intend to describe how this social stratum
is defined by researchers (either Chinese or Westerners), media and by the « members » of
the Chinese middle class themselves in a process limited by the context of « reforms ». The
emergence of a middle class is perceived through two, closely related but obviously
contradictory points of views.

12. Firstly the appearance of a middle class is considered as a consequence of the success of
reforms. Different related groups have taken advantage of the new economic context in
gaining higher incomes. This increase in standards of living would have led, almost
automatically, to a radical change in ways of consumption and in perceptions of social life.
This phenomenon is an aspect of the « transition » to modern society. Secondly, the Chinese
middle class is perceived politically as a « stabilizing » factor. Being situated between the
elites and the lower strata (the « have been »), it should play a « go-between » role. That
way, political tensions between the rich and the poor could be, if not eliminated, at least,
largely alleviated.
Fashioning the Virtual Middle Class: the imagination of
Bourgeois life in Chinese Net Literature
Yan FENG, Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Fudan University, Shanghai
This paper probes the emergence of Chinese middle class from a specific literary
perspective. A spectacular phenomenon in Chinese literature of the recent years is the boom
of the so-called "net literature", or "web literature", which is literature published not in
conventional literary magazines, but through the media of internet. Shunning literary
censorship, the budding net literature takes an apparently deviated route off (yet more
coincidental of) the official literary line, expressing more freely the desire of the youth for both
spiritual and material self-fulfilment. Since the net population largely overlaps with the
emergent middle class and the middle class wannabe, the net literature offers a ready
kaleidoscope through which the mentality, desire, and fantasy of this particular social stratum
can be explored. There are stereotyped images of the white-collar in pursuit of fortune and
glory in a rapidly differentiating society. The net literature extensively deals with the subject
matter of individuality through taste, sexuality, body, enjoyment, and materiality. It is an
hybridization of normalized (or consumerized?) individuality, consumerism in the form of anti-
consumerism. With its amorality, political apathy, and hedonism, the net literature indeed
takes part in the deconstruction of the socialist ideology, while embracing the so-called ¡°new
ideology¡±, or ideology of the middle class.
Consuming Leisure in Contemporary China
Xun Zhou, SOAS, University of London
In Consumer Culture and Modernity, Don Slater argues that 'consumer culture is a motif
threaded through the texture of modernity, a motif that recapitulates the preoccupations and
characteristic styles of thought of the modern west' (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997). Outside
the Western sphere, consumer culture is central to the economic, social and political
landscape of many Asian countries. In the past hundred years, the Asian middle class has
played an essential role in changing such landscape. As Naisbitt observes, 'They are better
educated, are marrying later and having fewer children. The young, urban middle classes of
Asia are as sophisticated as any in the world. They lead sophisticated lifestyles and want
sophisticated products and services. They are looking for quality as part of a self-conscious
search for quality of life' (Naisbitt, Megatrends Asia, 1996, 36pp).
The present paper is an attempt to explore the relationship between the Chinese middle
class and the commodification of modern life in post Mao China by examining how the
Chinese middle class consumes their empty time through leisure activities - from tourism to
eating out, cinema, Karaoke, dance, sports and fitness, and games. In modern China,
changes of leisure behaviour amongst middle class consumers are reflections of the social
and political transformation that has taken place in the country since the post-Mao period,
accompanied by dramatic urbanisation, industrialisation, growth of technology and science,

13. mass movements of people and the development of new social and personal opportunities
from the 1990s with the economic reforms.
Aspirational Weddings: Indian Bridal Magazines and the
Canons of ‘Decent Marriage’
Patricia UBEROI, Institute of Economic Growth & Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi
Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) provides an uncannily
contemporary description of the conspicuous consumption – and more importantly, the
conspicuous waste – of the ‘leisure class’ of ‘any highly organized industrial community’.
Oddly enough, Veblen’s account ignores the conspicuous display of the ‘pecuniary canons of
taste’ on the occasion of weddings, though marriages must surely have been a great
occasion for status display and invidious competition in the society of his day. They are
certainly a centre-piece of conspicuous consumption in the life-styles of middle and upper
class Indians and, one might hazard, also of the emerging Chinese middle classes under the
regime of economic reforms.
A prominent feature of the contemporary media scene in India has been the growth in the
number and glossiness of ‘life-style’ magazines, providing new ‘canons of taste’ for those
aspiring to attain or maintain grounds of social distinction vis-à-vis their neighbours. This
paper draws on materials from the new range of ‘bridal’ magazines to reflect not only on the
symbolization of social distinction, but also on the remaking of conjugality that these life-style
magazines reflect and endorse. As interesting as their positive messages on life-style
choices in respect to clothes, trousseaus, jewellery, honeymoons, beauty regimes, gifts, etc.,
are the erasures of the awkward details of matchmaking, dowry-giving, the conduct of affinal
relations in the joint family context, and, most importantly, conjugal sex.