Consumer-Citizens of China : The Role of Foreign Brands in the Imagined Future China
This book presents a comprehensive examination of Chinese consumer behaviour and challenges the previously dichotomous interpretation of the consumption of Western and non-Western brands in China. The dominant position is that Chinese consumers are...
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This book presents a comprehensive examination of Chinese consumer behaviour and challenges the previously dichotomous interpretation of the consumption of Western and non-Western brands in China. The dominant position is that Chinese consumers are driven by a desire to imitate the lifestyles of Westerners and thereby advance their social standing locally. The alternative is that consumers reject Western brands as a symbolic gesture of loyalty to their nation-state. Drawing from survey responses and in depth interviews with Chinese consumers in both rural and urban areas, Kelly Tian and Lily Dong find that consumers situate Western brands within select historical moments. This embellishment attaches historical meanings to Western brands in ways that render them useful in asserting preferred visions of the future China. By highlighting how Western brands are used in contests for national identity, Consumer-Citizens of China challenges the notion of the "patriot’s paradox" and answers scholars’ questions as to whether Chinese nationalists today allow for a Sino-Western space where the Chinese can love China without hating the West. Consumer-Citizens of China will be of interest to students and scholars of business studies, Chinese and Asian Studies and Political Science. Kelly Tian is Professor of Marketing and holds the Anderson Chair of Business at New Mexico State University. Lily Dong is Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. Chapter One IMAGINING CHINA, IMAGINING BRANDS: Foreign Brands as Global Brands from the Imagined West; Western and Domestic Brands As Materials for Realizing an Imagined Future China; Obscured State Influence and Consumer Autonomy; Organization of the Book Chapter Two RETHINKING POPULAR NOTIONS OF CHINESE CONSUMERS’ MOTIVES FOR RESPONDING TO WESTERN BRANDS: The Emulative Motive For Western Brand Consumption; The Patriotic Motive for Rejecting Western Brands; Rethinking the Primacy of the Emulative Motive for Consuming Western Brands; Rethinking "Consumer Nationalism" as Synonymous with Western Brand Boycotting; Chinese Consumers as Active Meaning Makers Chapter Three HIGHLIGHTED MOMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF BRANDED GOODS IN CHINA: The Emergence of Branded Goods in Late Imperial China; Branded Goods in Semi-colonial China of the Early 20 th Century; Branded Goods Since Gaige Kaifang- China’s Economic Reform; Relevance of These Past Moments to Present-Day Brand Meanings Chapter Four FOREIGN BRANDS IN CHINA AS GLOBAL BRANDS FROM THE IMAGINED WEST: Overview of Research Method; Data Collection Sites; Our Data Collection Methods; Foreign Brands as Western Brands With Distinguishing Characteristics Chapter Five CHINESE NATIONAL NARRATIVES AND THE MEANINGS OF WESTERN BRANDS: The West as Experiential Venue, Western Brands as Instruments of Freedom; The West as Imperialist Oppressor, Western Brands as Instruments of Domination; The West as Subjugated, Conquered Western Brands as Redemption; The West as Economic Partner, Western Brands as Instruments of Economic Progress Chapter Six NATIONAL NARRATIVES IN IMAGINATIVE PROCESSING OF WESTERN BRAND PROMOTIONS: Imagined Consumption; Western Brand Producers’ Efforts to Evoke Consumption Fantasies; Individual Psychological Processes of Enlivening Consumption Fantasies; Narratives and Imagined Identity Transformations From Western Brand Consumption; The Influence of East-West Narratives On the Processing of Western Brands Promotions; Discussion Chapter Seven CITIZEN-CONSUMERS IN AN AGE OF GLOBALIZATION
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Remembering Hedley
Remembering Hedley commemorates the life of Hedley Bull (1932–85), a pivotal figure in the fields of international relations and strategic studies. Its publication coincides with the official opening on 6 August 2008 of the Hedley Bull Centre at The...
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Remembering Hedley commemorates the life of Hedley Bull (1932–85), a pivotal figure in the fields of international relations and strategic studies. Its publication coincides with the official opening on 6 August 2008 of the Hedley Bull Centre at The Australian National University in Canberra.
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Provincializing "the West" by essentializing "the East"?
Abstract: Like other educational theorists that have employed poststructuralist ideas, postcolonial theorists provide important insights into how seemingly innocuous educational practices can become effective tools of domination by using knowledge as...
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Abstract: Like other educational theorists that have employed poststructuralist ideas, postcolonial theorists provide important insights into how seemingly innocuous educational practices can become effective tools of domination by using knowledge as power. Misrepresentations of the difference between "the West" and "the East" have done important work for the colonizers. Under contemporary conditions such misrepresentations are, once again, prone to serve those who occupy the more privileged and powerful social positions. Despite the undeniable importance of such postcolonial analyses of education, the author has warned that we must tread carefully when limiting the scope of supposedly "Western" ideas, norms and processes such as capitalism or certain understandings of democracy and justice. Social-scientific and humanistic inquiry is needed in order to determine what does and what does not belong to "the West" and "the East", respectively. Otherwise the attempts to provincialize "the West" ...
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The provincialization of epistemology. Knowledge and education in the age of the postcolony
Abstract: Education is a prime terrain for the transmission, facilitation, development and production of knowledge. This is a truism bordering on platitude. Universities, in particular, are literally defined in terms of the generation of knowledge....
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Abstract: Education is a prime terrain for the transmission, facilitation, development and production of knowledge. This is a truism bordering on platitude. Universities, in particular, are literally defined in terms of the generation of knowledge. Given the intimate relationship between education and educational institutions, on the one hand, and epistemology and knowledge, on the other, it should come as no surprise that the decolonization discourses around provincialization of (Western) education should have come to include talk of provincialization of (Western) epistemology. The author's aim in this short contribution is to interrogate assertions regarding the '(de)provincialization' and/or '(de)colonization' of knowledge and epistemology in education and educational research and to investigate whether the postcolonial ideas of diverse and local epistemologies do not involve a mistaken sense of 'epistemology'. The author argues for an applied epistemology for the real world: ...
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Decolonising discourses as symptoms of morbidity
Abstract: The central argument in this paper is that the claims of decolonising discourses are a morbid symptom of a theoretical and political impasse. By decolonising discourses in education, the author refers to those theories and practices that...
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Abstract: The central argument in this paper is that the claims of decolonising discourses are a morbid symptom of a theoretical and political impasse. By decolonising discourses in education, the author refers to those theories and practices that are premised on the idea that political decolonisation in the post-war era has been insufficient to establish equality or justice. The socio-political power relationships from the past are, it is claimed, imprinted in the knowledge and knowledge practices of the West and, as such, strategies of reparative purification need to be constructed and implemented. Intellectually, the roots of decolonising theories can be traced at least to the disenchantment with western liberalism and modernity, eloquently voiced by Marcuse in Repressive Tolerance (1965), and in the subsequent development of southern/global/post-colonial theories that seek to establish contemporary effects of colonialism in former colonized societies. (DIPF/Orig.)
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