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to villagers is not core Islamic beliefs or com-pulsory Islamic practices but the rich and pow-erful imagery of spirit beings and spiritual pow-ers. Local forms of Islam, Beatty holds, need toadapt to these cultural orientations. Hencereaders see a form of Islam that fails to inducelarge and substantial changes in local percep-tions about the cosmos and in the way peoplerelate to cosmic forces. What Beatty describes,instead, is an accommodating multivocality inritual forms that is sensitive to a basic maxim—agreeing to differ.

Other variants of Islam external to Beatty'sfieldwork area are construed, however, as athreat to this carefully crafted local harmony.They are the Islams oi the major national or-ganizations—Nahdlatul Ulama and Muham-madiyah—and of the Indonesian state. By ac-cording a strong degree of orthodoxy andreligious insistence to these organized forms ofIslam, Beatty loses some of the fine-tunedsense of nuance and detail that color his ana ly-sis of religion in the local setting. The wider so-ciopolitical context of local religious life seemsunderdeveloped in other respects as well. Nodoubt, the terrors oi the 1965 coup that Beattystresses are still a subtext to local conflicts; butthis subtext also includes, I must assume, arange of other issues that marked the latterphase of President Suharto's regime.

Although a more coherent discussion ofsuch contexts is missing, and although theauthor avoids some of the deeper theoreticalquestions that his approach and material sug-gest, Beatty has produced a very readable andsensitive account of Javanese religion.

The Consumer Revolution in Urban China.Deborah 5. Davis, ed. Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 2000. xiii + 366 pp., illustra-tions, tables, photographs, bibliography, index.

Japanese Consumer Behavior: From WorkerBees to Wary Shoppers. John McCrcery.Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2000. ix+ 278 pp., illustrations, photographs, bibliog-raphy, index.

HAI RENBowling Green State University

The Consumer Revolution in Urban China isbased on the conference "Consumers andConsumer Culture in Contemporary UrbanChina" field at Yale University in 1997. Japanese

Consumer Behavior draws primarily on reportspublished in the 1980s and the 1990s by re-searchers of a Japanese market research com-pany. These books, different in their writingstyles and geographical foci, shed light on con-sumption in China and Japan since the 1980s.They also have broad implications for under-standing consumer culture, particularly cul-tural discourses of consumption, time manage-ment, and spatial organization shaped byconsumption and the economy.

Contributors to The Consumer Revolution inUrban China examine changes of consump-tion in China since the end oi the 1970s whenthe Chinese government began reforms. Someauthors analyze the implications of "new con-sumer behaviors surrounding domestic spend-ing" (p. 3); Deborah S. Davis states in the intro-duction that they consider "the everydaypurchases of food, clothing, and transportationand the more unusual expenditures for wed-ding finery and a special vacation" (p. 3). Othercontributors explore "experiences outside thedomestic sphere: radio call-in shows, ex-changes of greeting cards, feasting, dancing,bowling" and smoking (p. 3). The book as awhole, according to Davis, "tells a story of howchanging consumer behavior can enlarge thesocial space for urban residents to invest innonofficial initiatives" (p. 3).

In Japanese Consumer Behavior, JohnMcCreery reports about changes of Japaneseconsumer behavior in the 1980s and 1990s asseen through the eyes of Japanese researchers.He bases his analysis on research conductedby the Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living(HILL). McCreery describes in detail how liveshave changed in the generations since WorldWar II as japan has wrestled with the meaningof white collar careers, women spreading theirwings, changing family values, a shrinkingbirth rate, and an aging population. He showsthat the advertising industry, armed with scien-tific techniques such as statistics, does not dis-cover precisely what is going on in Japan.

The authors of the two books are clearly con-cerned with different aspects of consumption;contributors who consider Chinese consumersfocus on the state and the consumer formed bysociety-state relations, while McCreery, study-ing Japanese consumers, focuses on the indi-vidual and the consumer as a person whowants to enrich life. Two disparate images ofthe consumer emerge in these two volumes—the Chinese consumer as <\ subject of the state

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and the Japanese consumer as a subject ofcapital.

The image of the Chinese consumer is situ-ated in what the authors call the nonofficialspace—a continuously expanding space inde-pendent oi the government. Contributors dis-cuss a range oi places and artifacts that mightbe considered nonofficial—the apartmenthome, the restaurant, the dance club, thebowling alley, the wedding dress, the greetingcard, and the premium cigarette. In these non-official spaces the Chinese have begun to ex-perience, in Richard Madsen's words, "free-doms" from hunger and chaos, of consumerchoices, of personal expression, and of living aprivate life (pp. 314-316)—a set of freedomsthat also have social and political constraintssuch as the state's policing oi social stabilityand peer pressure on Chinese consumers.

In contrast, McCreery draws no connectionsbetween Japanese consumers and the Japa-nese state. HILL leaders differentiate between"buyer" (shohisha) and "a person with a life"(seikatsusha) (p. 265). Ashohisha, in the wordsoi Shoji Takashi, President and C.E.O. ofHakuhodo Inc., is "someone who buys things"(p. 265). The word is used in expressions suchas car buyer, food products buyer, or electricitybuyer. A seikatsusha, in comparison, means" 'a person with a life,' who doesn't have tobuy things to be alive" (p. 265). To name a con-sumer a car buyer, for example, reflects thepoint of view of the car manufacturer whowants the consumer to buy a car. To name thesame consumer a person with a life indicatesthe point of view of the advertising agency,who situates the consumer in the broad socialcontext in which buying a car is merely oneelement oiWie. The distinction made by the ad-vertising agency shows that the advertising in-dustry does not look at consumption in terms ofspecific objects; rather, the industry regardsconsumption as essential to everyday life. Inthis way, the advertising agency is able to cre-ate and tell stories in which product promotionembraces endless assoc iations that make com-modities relevant to everyday life.

A consideration oi ethnographic methodsfor understanding consumer culture is impor-tant for comparing the two different images ofthe consumer presented in these two books. Allethnographers confront the dilemma of whatto record and what to report to readers. Wheninvestigating consumption, which is tied to allaspects of everyday life, what of everyday life

should be especially relevant to the ethnogra-pher? Compared with McCreery's book on theJapanese advertising industry, Davis's editedvolume on society-state relations in China infact contains a range oi important but unexarrvined perspectives for understanding consump-tion. Three such perspectives are especiallyworth considering in the rest of this review.

The first perspective centers on the conceptof consumption. How do Chinese consumersdefine consumption (xiaofei) and describethemselves as consumers (xiaofeizheft If theChinese view post-1980s consumption as ahistorically new phenomenon, how do theycharacterize consumption? The authors men-tion some interesting relevant Chinese terms,including the Confucianist "relatively comfort-able" (xiaokang)and "great equality" (datong)(Hanlong Lu); "consumption arena" (xiaofeichangsuo) and "place of entertainment" (yulechangsuo) (Gan Wang); "psychological hotli-nes" (xinling rexian) (Kathleen Erwin); and"fast food" (kuaican) (Yunxiang Yan). To fur-ther analyze these concepts may enrich ac-counts of cultural discourses on consumption.

The second perspective examines whereand when consumption takes place. If con-sumption in China is popular and pervasive,how should analysts describe consumption interms of temporality and spatiality? In otherwords, how does consumption shape timemanagement and spatial organization inChina in the 1990s? The authors use the termrevolution to characterize quantitative changescaused by consumption. They should not con-fuse quantitative changes such as the abun-dance of consumer choices and improvedstandards of living with qualitative changesthat characterize a sense of new time (or mod-ernity). The cases included in the book suggestthree areas for further study. First, authorscould have explored the circulation of goods.For example, Lu's concept of "massified con-sumption" (dazhonghua xiaofei)(p. 130) of du-rable goods suggests a specific mode of com-modity circulation in the 1980s. Second,authors did not examine how commodities areproduced. They overlooked how the Chinesestandardize product design <md manufactur-ing, relocate production sites to lower cost ar-eas, and speed up realization of c apital invest-ment by developing sales strategies. Inaddition, contributors to Davis's volume didnot study the importance ot media in selling

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commodities and shaping public discoursesabout consumption.

Finally, scholars studying consumer cultureshould examine how consumption is linked toproduction in the market driven economy.Consumption in China, as in many other coun-tries, has become an engine of the economy. Inthis context of social development, the politi-cal realm of government, the economic realmof accumulation, and the sphere of cultural ex-pressions begin to converge (see Daniel Bell'sdiscussion of their relationships in The CulturalContradictions of Capitalism, Basic Books,1976). Social norms are ensured by the statealong with technicians and experts, such aspsychologists and social workers in Shanghaiwho give advice to others regarding issues ofsexuality, marriage, and family (Kathleen Er-win's paper). At another level of convergence,social order is constructed by policing con-sumer behavior or making consumers behaveproperly in built consumption environments.Fast-food restaurants such as McDonald's areclean, bright, and comfortable places (dis-cussed by Yunxiang Yan); but, more impor-tantly, they are built environments where Chi-nese consumers practice civil manners inrelation to cleanness and orderliness. Consum-ers can form an elite circle or class (discussedby Gan Wang) by frequenting such places asupscale restaurants, golf courses, bowling al-leys, karaoke bars, massage and sauna centers,and bars and cafes in luxury hotels. In addition,consumption hinges upon individual con-struction of identity—generational, sexual,ethnic, or national—and the search fora goodlife. Advertisements are designed to deal withthe paradox of everyday life, as in the case ofShanghai residents' dream of living in aningjing (peace and quiet) apartment in arenao (boisterous) city (David Fraser). Con-sumption constructs daydreams in which thereal and the unreal cooperate with each other.A consumer experiences himself or herself assomeone else he or she desi res whi le weari ng aWestern style wedding gown, taking an artisticwedding photo (see Maris Gillette), dancing infront of a mirror or on a stage in a night club (seeJames Farrer), or singing in a karaoke bar (seeGan Wang). These authors show that con-sumption encourages identities in which one'sOtherness is embodied.

The above three perspectives I suggest lorstudying consumer culture-—< ultural discoursesof consumption, time management, and spatial

organization shaped by the economy—shouldnot be limited to China and japan studies. Toexamine consumption as an anthropologicalproblem, scholars should unpack the conceptof the consumer in state or corporate dis-courses. Scholars need to examine how peoplerelate to the three discourses oi consump-tion—the market, the state, and the social. Inthis context, I would like to argue, the study oiconsumption may offer insights on under-standing what Hannah Arendt calls three fun-damental human activities—labor, work, andaction (The Human Condition, The Universityof Chicago Press, 1958).

Refashioning Futures: Criticism after Post-coloniality. David Scott. Princeton, Nj: Prince-ton University Press, 1999.233 pp., index.

HIROKAZU MIYAZAKINorthwestern University

David Scott attempts to reformulate criti-cism and assert its new possibilities in this col-lection of his own essays issued at the timelymoment when many social theorists seem toshare a sense of the I imits, and perhaps the end,of criticism as their principal form of interven-tion into the public discursive arena. In Refash-ioning Futures, Scott seeks to "intervene in—soas to contribute in some way to altering—theexisting configuration of the discursive spaceinhabited by postcolonial criticism" (p. 15). Al-though his alternative may not be satisfactory,Scott makes a convincing case for the limits ofpostcolonial criticism as it currently stands.

In each of the eight essays, Scott proposes toread influential works of anticolonial and post-colonial theorists, from Fanon to Foucault, aswell as political and academic debates in SriLanka and Jamaica, to shed light on the povertyof certain prevalent styles of criticism. For ex-ample, he discusses the Sri Lankan historian R.A. L. H. Gunawardana's attempt to decon-struct Sinhala nationalism by presenting amore complex view of Sinhala identity. Scottdescribes how Gunawardana's position wasstripped of its effectiveness when another SriLankan scholar, K. N. O. Dhamadasa, chal-lenged the historical evidence on whichGunawardana's argument was based. Scottconvincingly demonstrates in this example thelimits of historicist criticism where "the histori-cal problem oi what the past was" (p. 98) istaken to constitute a powerful challenge to "the