Profanations of Value: Luxury, Consumption and Market Research Expertise in Contemporary China

BADARÓ, MÁXIMO

Denver

Congreso; Annual Meeting of American Anthropological Association; 2015

American Anthropological Association

In the last two decades most specialists on the market of luxury consumption in China (journalists, consultants, marketing experts) have tended to depict the consumption of foreign luxury goods by new wealthy Chinese mainly as an aspirational and conspicuous behavior that does not pay attention to internal qualities and history of products but only to the social and economic status that they can provide. However, in recent years this portray has begun to concur with another one that highlights the increasing "maturity" and "sophistication" of wealthy Chinese when consuming these luxury products. In this paper I argue that theses changing perceptions and images about practices and motivations of Chinese wealthy consumers reveals anxieties about the redefinitions of the aesthetics and moral values of Western luxury products in China and, more broadly, about the risk of profanation of hegemonic notions of modernity.