Automobile Story

This is a case study of cultural anthropology about Die-cast Model Cars Collection. The purpose of my study is to explore a new way of urban cultural anthropology research from a better understanding of the phenomenon of a special consumption, private collection, and to examine some popular culture theories nowadays based on my fieldwork in Beijing.The thesis is mainly divided into three parts. I try to analyze this kind of collection from three different angles: spaces/fields, behaviors, and meanings.In the first part, I want to arrive at a deeper insight into the organizational patterns of this special social group, collectors, based on my observations and interviews. I observed from four different spaces/fields to analyze the phenomenon, home, shop, show, and Internet. There is a new community that is imagined but exists in present in a field that beyond the physical space-time.The second part, I want to interpret that there is a multiplizational tendency in present society based on my observation of the collectors' concrete collecting practices. It is a society that various behavioral patterns, values, and life styles juxtapose.Finally, after I compared the modern collections that represented by the model cars collection with the traditional ones, I found that "the specific logic of an economy of cultural goods'" of Bourdieu, could not explain the present phenomena completely. The social structure is being built by various powers.