| As the basic behavior in the living and growing of human beings, consumption inevitably becomes the major concern of the whole society. Uplifting the consumptive satisfaction serves as the impetus as well as the aim of social economic growth. Thanks to the policy of open and reform carried out 30 years ago, Chinese people's daily consumption has experienced such a great transformation that consumption standard, consumption structure and consumption style have been all on the upgrade. Such changes reflect clearly the rapid social and economic growth of China as well as its accelerating evolution in consumption culture. With great changes in their life and consumption, Chinese people have enjoyed the charm of socialist market economy and understood the rich and unique connotation of consumption culture with its evolution in consumption-object, consumption system, and custom.Culture is generally considered to be the combination of material wealth and spiritual wealth. In its broad definition, culture refers to such three fundamental concepts as material culture, institutional culture and spiritual culture, including material wealth, ideology, life style, values, behavioral norms and etc. Cultural evolution is an indicator of human evolution and the measurement of a nation's living and growing level. Modes of production constitute the foundation of the social, political and cultural life while people's needs for daily consumption motivate the running of society as a whole. Marx and Engels put forward that "Humans must be in a position to live in order to be able to'make history'. But life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself. And indeed this is an historical act, a fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life."2 The modes of production determine the social and psychological life of the whole society and become the cornerstone of mankind's historical activities. Therefore, people's needs for consumption and the evolution of these needs become the cornerstone of the development of the society as a whole.Consumption culture firstly is an economic culture. From the angel of social re-production, consumption is a process that satisfies the material and spiritual needs of human beings by consuming or enjoying the products (material products and services) made by human labor. This special property of consumption reveals the nature of economic culture- values, institutions and behaviors make up what consumption culture is. To analyze consumption culture is to reveal economic seeds for life style changes of certain group of people, and display the humane historical traditions, values-orientation and social psychosocial features, i.e. the analysis of consumption culture is a demonstration of people's life mode. It's a process of answering "how to live" and "why live in this way". Meanwhile, consumption culture is a norm and emotional connection between different consumption subjects formulated in the process of consuming. It manifests the nature of social relationship among people and also the mechanism that governs the society, politics, economy and culture. In every social formation, the succession and conversion of consumption culture and the contradictions and conflicts lies in it are always the most distinctive part of economic culture as well as the cultural formation as a whole.The dissertation mainly focuses on describing the present state of consumption culture and its developing trend in the context of economic culture's chronicle evolution so as to explore the main situations of cultures of material consumption, spiritual consumption and ecological consumption with different social formations or with different phases in the same society. With this major concern, this dissertation aims at illustrating how the changes in such cultural factors as concept, custom, and environment influence the consumption and life of each member of the society so as to present the shift of consumption culture of China from the traditional mode to a modern one. With the description of the evolutionary history of Chinese consumption culture, this dissertation also illustrates some causes that hinder the further expansion of people's consumption needs, thus formulating the analytical framework for the interaction between globalization and the modernization of China, and consumption culture incurred by economic culture. It aims at building up a system of consumption culture with Chinese characteristics so as to promote the development of economy, society and science as well as the progress of building a well-off society in an all-around way. It's of great significance to accelerate the modernization of China by understanding the change of living style, and the transformation of economy, society, politics and culture.Following the developmental history of the social productive force, this dissertation consists of seven chapters, which trace the evolution of consumption culture of China from primitive age to contemporary times and traditional form to modern being; and interpret the evolutionary law of Chinese society from an agricultural culture to an industrial culture, from savagery to modernization, and from shutting the door to the outside world to opening up to the world.The introductory part makes clear the background, significance, approach and methodology of this research, generalizing the logic structure and main idea of each chapter of this dissertation.Chapter one explores the connotation of consumption culture. Based on the illustrations of different definitions offered by experts home and abroad, this dissertation defines culture as the combination of material wealth and spiritual wealth made by humans. As what it is, culture should emphasize the practical social activities of humans, and its logic formula can be described as follows:social activities---social production---social product---social cultureThe distinctive feature of culture is the ability acquired in the process of social practice. Various social activities result in all sorts of social cultures. As to the classification of cultural hierarchy, the author of this dissertation assumes that the emerging and changing of material culture, value-culture, institutional culture and behavioral culture is a growing process of productive force and human civilization.This dissertation defines economic culture as the material foundation, the behavioral mode of economic subject, social demands, ideology and economic institutions that are implied or manifested in the process of humans'producing, exchanging, allocating, distributing, and consuming their material and spiritual resources. It puts forward that consumption culture in the first place is one major form and existing being of economic culture and it is the converging point of all kinds of cultures in the social life of human beings. Consumption culture is a humane culture with humans as its subject and values reflected from the consumptive needs as its nature. With various features of nationality, diversity, integrality, and relativity, consumption culture is the product of the historical accumulation acting on real life. With its functions of economic permeation and social guidance, consumption culture becomes the behavioral standard and mode of life and consumption, reflecting the ability and quality of consumption subjects (consumers) acquired from their social life. All the analyses above offer a theoretical basis for the latter chapters.Chapter two mainly sorts out the contexts of the development of Chinese traditional agriculture and the formation of consumption culture, and generalizes the overall features of consumption culture of ancient China-basic life and consumption features of traditional agricultural economy:self-sufficiency, single-structure, strict hierarchy, and consumption ties with kin. All these features condense into the core of the traditional Chinese consumption culture-dispense with lavishness and advocate for simplicity. The author believes that the history of traditional consumption culture of China is actually the history of dispensing with lavishness and advocating for simplicity. This is an ideology and institutional pattern accumulated and set up in thousands of years of Chinese history, which is the result of Feudal Royal Sovereignty and land institutions, Confucianism doctrines of enhancing farming and suppressing trading, and interactions between ethics of thrifty, moderation and balance. Hence, the concern of morality, ethic and politics is characteristic of traditional Chinese consumption culture, which is of inevitability and rationality for the sake of historical existence but also becomes the confinement to develop the consumptive needs throughout the ages.Chapter three mainly explores the complicated transformation of consumption culture from traditional form to modern form in China's earlier stage of economic development. This is a difficult transformation led by intellectuals and driven by western consumption culture under the national context of economy falling behind, the military being on the receiving end and sovereignty being infringed. This chapter also analyzes the shocks brought to consumptive ways and consumptive concepts in particular and the changes brought about respectively, which reflects the conversion of thinking patterns of Chinese people from the a traditional perspective to a modern one. The subject matter of "where China should go" which puzzles the modern society is examined from the angel of consumption culture. After the Opium War, the development of traditional consumption culture of China is actually the duplicating and transmuting of traditional consumption values to western consumption values. The core of traditional consumption culture such as the concept of dispensing with lavishness and advocating for simplicity and hierarchy consumption are wavered. The traditional consumption system based on dependency kinship has been gradually and irreversibly converted to a free and equal system of consumption based on independent personality.Chapter four illustrates the identity and isotonicity of economic modernization of China and the evolution of consumption culture. The progress and limitation of residential consumption in the context of highly-planned economy indicates that the social economy strategies and highly-planned economic system adopted when China was still in its youth severely confine the growing consumption needs of urban and rural residents, resulting in slow business, shrink of the market and lack of consumers. Consumption is almost disconnected from the industrial progress, and the fruit of economic growth is drifting apart from the material interests of the popular masses. The consumption needs are more or less ideological. The establishment of socialist economic system has changed the material environment of Chinese people and their choices of consumption, set up the subjective position of consumers in the market. As a result, the consumptive behaviors like clothing, eating, housing and travelling regain their own significance. Therefore, the structure of economy, society and culture has been changed totally and the historical transformation of Chinese consumption culture has been fulfilled at the same time.Chapter five explores the assimilation and conflicts between Chinese consumption culture and Western consumption culture from the perspective of globalization. The author believes that globalization is an inevitable trend of worldwide modernization and economic globalization is definitely accompanied by the convergence of cultures around the world. Economic globalization brings about the Chinese traditional consumption culture double-effects:consumption culture has already shown up the convergence and assimilation with other cultures, which greatly influences the consumption behaviors of Chinese people; meanwhile, for different consumption values and patterns do exist between China and western countries, the typical national mark cannot be diminished or substituted by the globalization of consumption culture. The globalization of economic culture accelerates China's entering into the international society and promotes China's economy impelled by the open and reform policy in a rapid and sustainable way. The consumption culture of China is impacted greatly by the consumption cultures of western world. The concept of life, consumption and living style of western economic market is of great influence on the living style of Chinese people. Some newly-rich people tend to enjoy consumerism and these people set examples for others, which bring about great impact on the life style of the others. The influence of consumerism enlarges the gap between social members, striking the dominant values of the society. Therefore, it's necessary to analyze the impact of consumerism so as to strike against it and maintain the consumption culture with Chinese characteristics under the context of the international comparison of consumption cultures induced by the economic crisis around the world.Chapter six mainly analyzes the basis and trend of multi-consumption culture under the context of mixed values and cultures of China at present time. With the changes of economic institutions and social thought after 30 years of opening up to the outside world and reforming, the perphysical and ideal moral paradigm of the past is disappearing. The assimilation and mixture of mainstream consumption culture, superior consumption culture and secular consumption culture are main features of China's consumption culture nowadays. First, the consumption culture that peruses the quality of life and advocate for the profit-maximization reveals the idea of realizing the value of life in consumption. The nature of this reform is people-and-livelihood-oriented, which comes into being a dominant and definite value form upheld by the society. Second, the sense of worth, moral outlook and ethics emerged in the market economy has brought about the prosperous development of the mass consumption culture. Under the impact of secular consumption culture, consumption becomes the center of people's daily life. Material pleasure has substituted for spiritual life and become the fashion of life. Perusing pleasure and comfort is substituting for working and starting the business and becomes an admirable way of life. Thirdly, the national mark and world mark of a culture are blending into one another, conforming to each other and also conflict with each other, which promote both the new constructing of global culture and the modern conversion and self-identity of Chinese culture. The blending and interacting of these two marks of one culture is vividly reflected in the evolution of consumption culture. The evaluation of social value and the regulation of ethical codes seem to be in a chaotic state but appear to be multi-characterized:vertical revolt against asceticism during the period of planned economy coexists with lateral transplant to post-modernism of the west; inheritance and development of consumptive experience coexists with the simple imitation and admiration of consumption "sign"; revived unwholesome aspects of mass consumption culture coexists with praise for elegant products of humanities culture.Chapter seven illustrates the construction and innovation of consumption culture in the hope of promoting the establishment of the well-off society in an all-around way. In order to fulfill the objective of building a well-off society in an all-around way, not only the economic developing pattern but also the living pattern together with the consumption style should be transformed as well as adjusted and improved so that a new consumption culture with typical Chinese characteristics can be set up. Consumption culture is a major part of constructing Chinese characteristic culture and socialist theory, serving for the construction of Chinese characteristic socialism. Promoting the construction of Chinese characteristic consumption culture is of great importance in the tasks of giving full play to consumption culture, human-livelihood guarantee, expanding the domestic demands, developing the economy and promoting the all-around development of human beings. From the analysis above, this dissertation suggests that it's necessary to adopt the advanced culture of the west to change the lagging state of China and enforce the economic basis of the construction of consumption culture. It is similarly necessary to intensify the reform of economic culture, the development of cultural industries, the construction of sustainable consumption culture, and the leading roles of government to educate people on consumption.As much as the author can collect, there are a lot of literature documents about consumption culture. From the perspective of social ethics, some of them are analyses of relationship between consumption culture and social change and explorations of consumption culture in the developing of industrialization of economic culture. From philosophical and ethnical point of view, some of them are analyses of the influence of consumption culture on literature and artistic theories. Few of them take the angle of economic theories and economic culture to list chronically the developing threads of consumption culture and to touch on its evolutionary progress so as to reveal the fundamental theory of the interaction between consumption and economic culture. Under the economic globalization and faced with the widespread of western consumption culture, it's a practical problem lies before the construction of modern consumption system that is bothering China whether it can carry on its excellent consumption culture of five thousand years, adapt the scientific aspects of western consumption approaches, fight against the harmful influence by western culture, construct a modern consumption culture with Chinese characteristics and promote all-around development of residents'psychological and physical freedom. It's also a problem of countermeasure to the promotion of harmony and civilization. It's the major concern of this dissertation.All in all, with the thorough survey on studies on consumption culture home and abroad, this dissertation employs Marxist theories as its guidance and tries to explore this subject matter by illustrating the evolutionary process of economic culture of China throughout thousands of years.The innovative efforts made by this dissertation are listed as follows:1. Subject-selection:most of the studies on consumption culture of China are confined to one-sided analysis of certain historical stage or one certain historical matter. This dissertation sorts out the major trend of the formation and transformation of China's consumption culture in the long history from ancient ages to modern times and from agricultural civilization to industrial civilization. Taking historical point of view in the long run, this dissertation tries to reveal the connotation of consumption culture and the paradigm and significance of the evolutionary history of consumption culture. This is the fist ever study compared with the author's survey on relevant researches. 2. Analytical framework:this dissertation takes the approach of Marxist historical materialism, viewing the impact of social economic development on the formation and development of consumption culture as the base, and takes the perspective of the developing history of Chinese consumption culture. It discusses on one hand the interaction between humans and consumption culture, in an attempt to illustrate how humans and consumption culture interact with each other:humans (quality and ability)→productive force→consumption culture (consumer goods, consumptive institutions and ethics)→consumers (thinking patterns and behavioral modes)→social economic foundation→humans...In this endless interaction and the evolution of social economic basis, the quality, ability and mind of humans are on the upgrade in general, which promote the social production and the spiraling evolution of social culture and consumption culture as well as the modernization of humans. On another hand, this dissertation puts emphasis on exploring the relationship between the progress of modernization of China and the evolution of consumption culture, in an attempt to sort out the thread of consumption culture in social progress:consumption demand→consumption activities→economic growth and social progress→consumptive satisfaction and uptrend→all-around development of humans→modernization of social life→the tendency of prosperity and perfection of consumption demand...This analysis that rooted in the relationship between humans and social economic growth is clear in thought and logic.3. Study approach:this dissertation branches out into some new illustrations about the evolution of consumption culture of China, with the Marxist basic position, viewpoints and methodology as its guidance, economics as its basis, and with interdisciplinary studies combining history, sociology, philosophy, ethics, culturology, and politics.4. Original ideas:this dissertation presents the author's original ideas from four aspects as follows:(1) Many scholars define consumption culture in accordance with the definition of culture. They think consumption culture is part of culture, in a broad sense that consumption culture includes two kinds of cultures of material consumption and spiritual consumption, and a narrow sense that consumption culture is people's conceptual reflection of consumption. The author regards consumption culture as an important part of economic culture, which is the concentrated expression of various kinds of cultures emerging in people's social life. According to the author, consumption culture reflects the behavioral codes, consumption ability, and psychological and physical quality of the consumption subjects (consumers) with specific social formation and it also indicates the specific social relationship between consumers. Furthermore, this dissertation systematically introduces the basic features of consumption culture:consumption culture is a people-oriented humane culture and it is in fact the sense of worth presented by consumption needs. As for its formation, consumption culture is characterized by nationality, diversity, integrity, and relativity; as for its function, consumption culture has the nature of being sharable, accumulative, continual and changeable and it is a product of interacting between historical inheritance and the reality; consumption culture is the standard and behavioral mode for people's daily consumption, and it is also the rule, ritual and regulation that people should abide by.(2) This dissertation points out clearly that the consumption culture of our country is typically a mixture of mainstream consumption culture, elite consumption culture and secular consumption culture. Economic globalization brings double utility to Chinese traditional consumption culture:the convergence and interfusion of consumption culture in a global world is deeply transforming and influencing the Chinese citizen's daily consumption; meanwhile, the globalization and nationality of consumption coexist and it is quite an important principle of promoting scientifically the consumption culture of China nowadays to understand the interfusion and interaction, contradiction and conflict of the two.(3) This dissertation puts forward and illustrates the major tasks of constructing the consumption culture with Chinese characteristics. It says that the construction of typical Chinese consumption culture is an important component of the theoretical system of socialism with Chinese characteristics and an equally important component of the core value system of socialism with Chinese characteristics.(4) The author of this dissertation argues that the innovation of rural and urban people's ideas about consumption culture is one of the great bulwarks to expand domestic demands. The author also offers some solutions and suggestions to some problems concerned.The study of consumption is a combination of theories and practices and a blending of various disciplines. It is a big challenge to the author's knowledge and ability because of the complexity and tremendous work of this thesis that strides over time and space and disciplines. The author is hardly dares to hope to give a thorough overview of the consumption culture of China with thousands of years of history, let alone does she attempt to describe every aspect of the rich connotation of consumption culture in a precise way. The author bears the hope that she could reflect upon the interesting subject matter of the Chinese consumption culture under the guidance of her supervisor and other professors, in expectation that she could outline the profile of consumption culture and finish this dissertation successfully so as to be tempered in the scientific study. It would gratify the author intensely if the work of this dissertation can be of any reference for the construction of Chinese consumption culture and the improvement of consumption standard of residents of China as well as their psychological and physical quality. Owing to the author's deficiencies in theoretical attainment, knowledge accumulation as well as analytical and absorbing ability, there are still some mistakes and omissions in this dissertation and the author remains open to all criticisms.The author hopes that this dissertation could shed light on the third subproject of 211 Project---the history of consumption culture of residents of PRC, set her thinking about her teaching and researching in consumption economics and motivate her to carry out the studies on this subject matter more profoundly and carefully.There are some aspects that this dissertation needs to improve on:1. There still left some room for reducing the deficiencies in understanding and summarizing the consumption culture of China. This is what the author of this dissertation is striving for.2. The analyses on consumption culture of each historical stage need more detailed illustrations due to an extended span of history of this dissertation.3. This dissertation still has room for a closer examination of some matters and a stronger argumentation for that due to the width and complexity of the subject matter.
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