Consumption Culture And Its Change In Contemporary Rural Community:Material, Norm And Expression In A Village In Northeast China

Based on the first-hand data from fieldwork in He Village, this dissertation tries to describe the characteristics and the skeleton of three-dimensional consumption culture, within the theoretical framework of the delayed development effect in the field of Development Sociology.In the form of consumption culture ethnography, this paper describes and discusses the "delayed development" spectacles of consumption culture in He Village, a delayed-development region."The silent consumption revolution" has appeared in He Village since the1980s, as a result of the combined effects of state, market and mass media. State is active in the formation of macro environment of consumption revolution, by the public policy such as the transformation from public consumption to personal consumption, opening up of rural market, elevation of farmers’ income. Community memory in the period of people’s commune enhances the breadth and depth of consumption revolution. Regulated by China’s urban-rural dual social structure, rural community has also developed into the urban-rural dual consumption structure."Material consumption culture" in He Village has been experiencing great development:material goods in traditional natural economy were facing the symbolic competition, without the period of innovative technology and scale production. Time and space are materialized in the system of local knowledge.Diversification is the characteristic of He Village’s normative culture. Firstly, Collectivism is emphasized between the whole family and family members, and altruism is respected among family members, since the family has been smaller. Secondly, betrothal gift, which is to protect the married women, could be regarded as the interaction consumption during the interaction between family, in-laws family and offspring family. Thirdly, community norms in the economic-social dimensions represent community collective consciousness, regulating deviant and anomie in the process of consumption; consumption obviously beyond consumption’s economic capacity in local community would be criticized, so did consumption obviously expose female "sexuality"; Luxury consumption of returning youth would be tolerated, so did villagers’everyday clothing. Social members’self-awareness and self-expression in consumption can be viewed as the characterization of expressive consumption culture. Firstly,"local fashion" emerges during villagers’pursuit for fashion in city, which is seen as "the process of civilization" in all areas of basic necessities. Firstly, self can be recognized during villagers’consumption of Television program. Secondly, self could also be seen in the peoples’consumption of leisure sports, in the consumption norms established by the state will, mass media, community knowledge. Villagers make it their cultural capital and social capital via the means of body exercise.This paper proposes a dichotomous analytical framework of "survival need-enjoyable need" based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Survival-needs, including physiological needs and safety needs, could be met by material consumption; enjoyable-needs, including social interaction, love and belonging, esteem, self-actualization, spiritual culture, could be supported by enjoyable-consumption, which is composed of normative consumption and expressive consumption. Secondly, consumers would consume more for enjoyable need when his survival needs are met, by the law of diminished marginal benefit. Thirdly, consumption culture might be investigated by three dimensions:material consumption culture, normative consumption culture and expressive consumption culture.Consumption on enjoyable needs would be largely promoting villagers’happiness, when their survival needs were met. Usually, spiritual culture products is difficult to obtain from market for its weak-economic benefit, thereby it is an efficient approach to intervene the shaping mechanism of local consumption culture for government under the background of market economy and opening society.So, a natural conclusion can be drawn that there exist great possibility that "post-materialism" might be formed in the delayed development region.