Approaching Consumer Culture: Global Flows and Local Contexts

303 Pages·2018·3.507 MB·English

by  Evgenia Krasteva-Blagoeva

International Series on Consumer Science
Evgenia Krasteva-Blagoeva E ditor
Approaching
Consumer
Culture
Global Flows and Local Contexts
International Series on Consumer Science
Series Editor
Jing Jian Xiao, University of Rhode Island, USA
For further volumes:
http://www.springer.com/series/8358
Evgenia Krasteva-Blagoeva
Editor
Approaching Consumer
Culture
Global Flows and Local Contexts
Editor
Evgenia Krasteva-Blagoeva
New Bulgarian University
Sofia, Bulgaria
ISSN 2191-5660 ISSN 2191-5679 (electronic)
International Series on Consumer Science
ISBN 978-3-030-00225-1 ISBN 978-3-030-00226-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00226-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018957319
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Preface
This edited volume comprises a collection of papers presented at the international
conference “New Consumer Practices: Anthropological Perspectives” held at New
Bulgarian University, Sofia, in April 2015. The main aim of the conference was to
track current cultural transformations in the context of “global” consumer culture.
Globalization is perceived here not simply as a process of cultural homogenization
but as a flow and exchange of goods, people, information, knowledge, and images.
In fact we see it as a process of communication conducted on a global level.
Following Featherstone’s ideas of studying contemporary consumer culture using
framework that seriously displaces the “West” from center stage, the research
interests of the contributors of this volume are focused on different ways of the
production of locality through consumption. In other words, what we are concerned
with are glocalization processes occurring in cultures perceived as “non-Western”
or “not enough Western.” The production of local consumer cultural contexts, or
cultural scapes, to follow Appadurai, is empirically recorded and analyzed in detail
through the methods of fieldwork and participant observation. Most of the chapters
focus on consumer transformations that arose in southeastern European countries
after the fall of communism. They offer theoretical approaches and empirical data
about consumer culture in the region over the last 30 years, to allow the comparison
of different ways of experiencing these processes and coping strategies “from
below” in different postsocialist countries. Other chapters take up the issue of
consumer culture in East Asia like China and Japan in particular.
Professor Featherstone was the conference’s keynote speaker. His chapter,
“Consumer Culture and Its Futures: Dreams and Consequences,” brilliantly
theorizes the emergence of the global cultural situation, from the rise of consumer
culture in Western European courts to current global ecological changes caused by
consumer culture and its 24/7 consumption patterns, so deeply transformative of
human sensitivities and sociability. His chapter provides a global framework for the
problems discussed in other chapters and thus may serve as a general introduction
to this book.
The global-local axis is present in all the chapters, yet the scope of problems
addressed by the authors is quite diverse. Socialism as a context for consumption
v
vi Preface
development is the central topic of several chapters. Some local differences in
eastern bloc and in the Balkans in particular are outlined and verified empirically.
Yugoslavia, for example, can be seen as an “exception” and an instance of the
so-called market socialism resulting in various consumer practices that were close
to Western consumption yet at the same time were anchored in the dominant
paradigm of socialist values and norms (Ildiko Edrei). This sharply contrasts with
the Bulgarian experience of constant deficits, which led to illegal commerce, over-
valuation of Western and other hard to access goods, different customization, and
even subversive customization practices, which had an impact on the construction
of individual and group identities (Krasteva-Blagoeva, Kristian Bankov).
Postsocialist transformations and their consequences for consumption practices
and consumer culture in southeastern Europe are investigated in detail. Yuson Jung
examines difficulties of establishing consumer activism in Bulgaria, due to the
widespread distrust of civil society and its ability to ensure real protection of
consumers against false products and deceptive practices. Studying everyday shop-
ping in a Serbian town, Marina Simić concludes that buying Western goods and
imitating Western consumer practices in a specific way reaffirms the non-Western
status of the buyers as “cultural others.” Tsvete Lazova theorizes the commoditiza-
tion of archeology as a discipline through marketing of the archeological site of
Perperikon, Bulgaria, via the specific “production of antiquity” and the construction
of an archeological narrative designed to territorialize national space.
Two chapters are dedicated to food and food practices in postsocialism. Monica
Stroe studies the revival of homemade preserves in Romania, a shortage-driven
practice from socialist times that was given new meaning as a “creative domestic
activity of self-provisioning.” Domestication processes of pizza (as a culturally
close product) and of sushi (as utterly different as viewed from a “traditional”
perspective) are interpreted by Iskra Velinova as examples of the production of local
meanings of urban culinary culture in the context of globalization.
The “Asian” part of the book consists of three chapters: two on Japan and one on
China. Tomoko Tamari studies Mitsukoshi Department Store as an emblematic site
for the formation of Japanese modernity. She sees the so-called modern girls as
symbolic figures of the new Japanese consumer culture, dating from the early
twentieth century. Japanese middle strata consumption patterns are analyzed by
Maya Keliyan as a way of tracing the transformation of postmodern Japanese
society from “middle class” to “middle mass” and finally to “divided middle mass.”
Min Zhou traces the historical roots and cultural premises of conspicuous
consumption in China and contrasts it with Western conspicuous consumption
practices.
This book combines illuminating theoretical discussions of global consumer
culture “from above” with intriguing empirical analyses “from below” of the con-
sumption patterns of people belonging to several different “non-Western” cultural
milieus. This volume no doubt is fated to be consumed in a variety of ways as it
Preface vii
navigates its way through international academic circles. At its core it will remain a
significant result of a collective effort to advance the horizons of our understanding
of consumer culture in a globalized world.
Sofia, Bulgaria Evgenia Krasteva-Blagoeva
Contents
Consumer Culture and Its Futures: Dreams and Consequences . . . . . . . . 1
Mike Featherstone
“You Are a Socialist Child Like Me”: Goods and Identity
in Bulgaria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Evgenia Krasteva-Blagoeva
Consumer Culture from Socialist Yugoslavia to Post-socialist Serbia:
Movements and Moments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Ildiko Erdei
Overview of Consumer Culture in Bulgaria: From Perestroika
to Facebook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Kristian Bankov
Consuming “Others”: Post-socialist Realities and Paradoxes
of Appropriation in Serbia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Marina Simić
The Meanings and Practices of “Consumer Activism” in Postsocialist
Bulgaria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Yuson Jung
Preserves Exiting Socialism: Authenticity, Anti-standardization,
and Middle- Class Consumption in Postsocialist Romania . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Monica Stroe
The Pleasures of Being Global: Cultural Consumption of Pizza
and Sushi in a Bulgarian City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Iskra Velinova
Consumption of the Past: Constructing Antiquity of an Archaeological
Site in Bulgaria and Marketing the Ideological Narrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Tsvete Lazova
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x Contents
Modernization and the Department Store in Early-Twentieth-Century
Japan: Modern Girl and New Consumer Culture Lifestyles . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Tomoko Tamari
A Cultural Reading of Conspicuous Consumption in China . . . . . . . . . . . 257
Min Zhou
Middle Stratum Consumption Patterns as a “Key”
for Understanding Japanese Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
Maya Keliyan
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
About the Authors
Mike Featherstone is a professor of sociology at Goldsmiths, University of

London. He is founding editor of the journal Theory, Culture & Society and the
Theory, Culture & Society Book Series. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Body &
Society. He is the author of Consumer Culture and Postmodernism (1991, 2nd
edition 2007) and Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity
(1995), and coauthor of Surviving Middle Age (1982). He is editor of over a dozen
books and author of numerous journal articles and book chapters on social and
cultural theory, consumer and global culture, aging and the body. His books and
articles have been translated into 16 languages. He has spent time as a visiting pro-
fessor in Barcelona, Geneva, Kyoto, Recife, São Paulo, Singapore, Tokyo, and
Vancouver. He is founder and coordinator of the Theory, Culture & Society New
Encyclopaedia Project, a research network of scholars at universities in Europe,
Asia, Latin America, and Africa, which has held 20 colloquia and is producing a
series of cluster volumes (the first on Problematizing Global Knowledge was
published in 2006 and is currently being translated into a number of languages).
Evgenia  Krasteva-Blagoeva is an associate professor in the Department of

Anthropology, New Bulgarian University, Sofia. Her research interests are in con-
sumer culture, ethnography of socialism and postsocialism, urban anthropology,
communities and identities in the Balkans, names and name giving. She is a mem-
ber of the Executive Committee of InASEA (International Association of Southeast
European Anthropology) (2007–2014, 2016–2018) and elected president of
InASEA (2014–2016). She was twice guest lecturer in the Institute of Ethnology,
University “Ludvig Maximilian,” Munich (2006, 2008), and in Konitsa Summer
School of Balkan Anthropology (2006, 2008). She is a leading scholar in several
research projects such as “Fast Food and Slow Food Culture in the Beginning of
21st century” and “New Consumer Practices: Anthropological Perspectives.” She is
the author of The Personal Name in Bulgarian Tradition (1999, in Bulgarian) and
editor in chief of Total Sale. Consumer Culture in Bulgaria (2014, in Bulgarian).
She has also authored more than 30 articles in refereed journals and edited volumes
in English and German.
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