Life is Not Complete Without Shopping: Consumption Culture in Singapore

Front Cover
NUS Press, 2003 - Business & Economics - 209 pages
This book is a series of essays by Singaporean sociologist Chua Beng Huat, one of Asia's leading commentators on the sociology of shopping and consumption. They are explorations of the consumption experience in Singapore, whether that be hanging out at the town center McDonalds, riding the escalator at Ngee Ann City, or learning how to look at price tags at Prada. Why do powerful women wear cheongsam? What is the symbolic significance of Peranakan food in Singapore? What do locally-made films say about class in Singapore? This collection of essays combines keen sociological analysis and sharp observation. Chua looks beyond the billboards and the TV commercials to examine how Singaporeans constitute their social reality in an environment steeped in global consumer imagery.
 

Contents

Framing Singapores Consumption Culture
3
The Emerging Culture of Consumption
17
Displays Shapes
41
Steps to Becoming a Fashion Consumer
56
On the Power Cheongsam and Other Ethnic Clothes
76
Food Ethnicity and Nation with Ananda Rajah
93
Singaporeans Ingesting McDonalds
121
Where Got?
139
Hokkien Films
156
Cinematic Critique from the Margins and the
177
References
190
Index
200
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Page 191 - Singapore' in Hing. Wong and Schmidt (eds) Cross Cultural Perspectives of Automation. Berlin: Ed. Sigma, pp. 285-317. Ho. Wing Meng (1989) 'Values Premises Underlying the Transformation of Singapore' in KS Sandhu and Paul Wheatley (eds) Management of Success: Moulding of Modern Singapore.
Page 191 - Routledge). (1997). Housing and Political Legitimacy: Stakeholding in Singapore (London: Routledge). (1999). 'Asian Values' Discourse and the Resurrection of the Social Positions', East Asia Cultures Critique, 7: 573-92.

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