文化研究:Starbucks在中国

文章来自哈佛大学社会学系的博士生张敏, 很有见地! 从文化学的角度看消费. 在美国, Starbucks是学生们看书消遣和免费上网的地方. 中国呢? 社会地位的象征. 随着经济发展, 这种差别一定会改变的.

Starbucks, the McDonald’s in the beverage world, now serve as one of the most remarkable criteria to distinct middle class from ordinary people in metropolitan cities in China. In this paper, resting upon the analysis of its self-conscious construction of high-end consumer group, maintenance of high prices, as well as the formation of the “commercialized private space”, I attempt to argue that the transnational company also would like to creatively utilize that local image in the process of localized globalization. In consequence, this localization actually reinforces or even reinvents the original tradition, which, in Starbucks’ case, presents the agency of Starbucks in encouraging the burgeoning of middle class as well as the reification of the boundary of social hierarchy in contemporary China.