Life is Not Complete Without Shopping: Consumption Culture in SingaporeThis 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 |
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Common terms and phrases
advertisements Ah Beng Ah Lian American Americanisation appearance Asian values audience behaviours belacan body boutiques browser Cantonese capitalism chapter cheongsam chilli Chinese cuisine Chinese food Chinese languages Chua clients clothes colours commodities consumer culture consumerism consumption cooking cuisine culinary department store dialect discourse dish dress economic growth English ethnic everyday example fashion film fried global globalised groups halal hawker hawker centres Hokkien Hong Kong hybrid hybridisation identity ideological Indian individual instances interactional Islamisation Jack Neo Japan Japanese Khoo's language locations Malay Malaysia Mandarin McDonald's Mee Pok multiracial Muslim noodles Peranakan cuisine Peranakan food political popular culture population pork practices programmes public housing estates purchase representation restaurants retail rojak sales person sauce shopping centres Singapore Singaporeans Singlish social society soup Southeast Asia space success Taiwan Taiwanese Takashimaya television Teochiu tourist transformation villagers visitors women young youth
Popular passages
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.
References to this book
Identity Matters: Ethnic and Sectarian Conflict James L. Peacock,Patricia M. Thornton,Patrick B. Inman No preview available - 2007 |