Lifestyle Media and Social Transformation in Asia

Abstract

Across Asia, the past three decades have been marked by shared experiences of hyper-accelerated social, cultural and economic transformation. Consumer culture plays an increasing role in countries once dominated by socialism, and neo-liberal economic and social policies increasingly are being adopted by authoritarian statist regimes. More and more, governments address their citizens as individualised, sovereign consumers with reflexive ‘choices' about their lifestyles and identities. One of the correlates of these processes of (neo-) liberalisation has been the emergence of new formations of consumption-oriented middle classes with lifestyle aspirations that are shaped by national, regional and global influences. How are everyday conceptions and experiences of identity and citizenship being transformed by rearticulated cultures of modernity across the region? This article draws upon the insights of existing Euro-American research on lifestyle culture and consumption, but extends its focus by relocating such concerns within the context of Asia and within a trans-national comparative frame. Examining how the rise of lifestyle media and culture is involved in a series of complex, local-level ideological contestations around emergent forms of sociality and identity across a range of geo-cultural sites, including India, China, Singapore and Taiwan, the authors challenge reductive assumptions about the global translatability and mobility of ‘Euro-modernity’.