Keyword

consumer culture, changing value, globalization

Objectives

This research will direct attention to the multisided character of distribution and consumption as aspects of globalization, exploring new possibilities for the anthropological study of contemporary consumer culture. The project will examine numerous examples of consumption from all over the world: used and copied products in Africa, Japanese anime in Thailand, fair trade goods in Ghana and Laos, jewelry in Nepal, ready made ethnic dress among the Miao, a minority ethnic group in China, hand-woven carpets in Turkey, karate and cosmetics in Egypt, the distribution and consumption of whale meat in Japan. The case studies will focus on two issues: The first topic will be how goods move between advanced and newly industrializing nations and the regions under study. Our aim will be to clarify changes in the value of the items traded, including investigation of how best to reconstruct and recreate the global economic system. The second topic will be changes in self-expression and identity in the targeted regions as these reflect new perspectives on environment and gender, breaking down the results by class and generation, to explore similarities and differences between the targeted regions and Japan and other advanced economies.

Research Results

The difficulty in the anthropological survey and research about consumers lies in the fact that consumers did not always form a unity or community for the consumption of things. In order to overcome this difficulty, this research took an anthropological approach to the discussion based on the following viewpoints: (1) the viewpoint that the change in value was brought about through the movement of things and in the course of such movement, (2) the viewpoint that the creation and change of the self-identity or group identity was focused on daily consumption, and (3) the viewpoint that the mutual relationship of the agency of things and people was the focus in the scene where things were consumed. However, it became clear through the study meetings that a certain type of discontinuation existed between consumption (or consumers) and distribution (or distributors) as well as consumption (or consumers) and production (producers), and that between these two parties an “interface” (in a boundary or joint) existed in either case to convert the context of the value of things or consumption and to mediate or intermediate with each other. It was also clarified that there was a commonality from a micro-point or view in the practice of actors placed at such an “interface.” Based on the above clarifications, we divided the phenomena dealt with by our research members into the following three categories to create an approach focusing on the practice of actors that would be responsible for negotiation and conversion of the value generated from the “interface”: (1) the dynamism of the change in the value or meanings of local products brought about as the global consumption and markets changed (for example, the shift to fair trade, industrial commodities, ready-made clothes and scarce traditional foods) (by Ushiku, Minoo, Tamura, Miyawaki and Wakamatsu), (2) the dynamism of the change in the consumption context (the relationships among social classes and genders) brought about by globalization and modernization (by Toriyama, Aishima), and (3) the dynamism of adopting a new thing in the local society or distributing a thing globally by using a new method (by Ogawa and Miyawaki). Such an approach was recognized to be effective in studying the dynamism of the current global consumption culture from the following viewpoint: even after it turned out that there was a limit to the pluralistic approach that took as a matter of course the existence of clear cultural boundaries characterizing consumption, production and distribution, a specific consumption culture would not cover the world unilaterally or the consumption culture would not be broken down into infinite plurality by atomized individuals. Instead, the plurality and diversity in the cultural boundaries surrounding consumption or meaning of things as well as in the global phenomena surrounding consumption would be redefined or rebuilt through multiple interfaces whenever required.