Transcript ANTH 325 Tensions in Urban China: Culture, Politics, and Public

The Dynamics of the Chinese Marketplace:
Why Culture Matters
Dr. Pan, Tianshu 潘天舒
School of Social Development and
Public Policy, Fudan University
Professional Background
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EDUCATION
Ph.D. in Anthropology, Harvard University (2002).
A.M. in East Asian Studies, Harvard University (1995).
B.A. in English Literature, Fudan University (1989).
Junior Year at Leeds University, England (1988)
TEACHING POSITIONS HELD
Professor, School of Social Development
and Public Policy, Fudan University, China (2012- )
Assistant Professor, Walsh School of
Foreign Service and the Department of
Sociology and Anthropology, Georgetown
University, USA (2002-2005).
Adjunct Professor, School of Advanced
International Studies,
Johns Hopkins University,
My year in Leeds, N. England (1987-1988)
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Texts
Milton, Metaphysical Poets, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia
Wolf, T.S Eliot, William Shakespeare
 Contexts / Cultural Encounters
Fish and Chips, Yorkshire accent, Odeon Theatre, Leeds
United, Mince Pie, Lord of Rings, afternoon tea, Chinese
take-away, Xmas holiday, corrupt Romanian officials,
swear words, tabloids, pranks, cultural blunders, etc.
Harvard GSAS (1993-2002)
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1993-95 (the entrepreneurial spirits of my
RSEA classmates)
 1997 summer research in Shanghai (food
rationing under socialism)
 Spring of 1998, Non-traditional Workshop at
HBS (Harvard Business School)
 Working as head teaching fellow for two
extremely popular anthropology professors
- Ethnographies of consumerism, and the cultural
dynamics of the global marketplace (East Asia)
James Watson
Ted Bestor
SFS and Sociology Dept (2002-2005)
Reconfiguring Business Anthropology @Fudan
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Attempt to reconfigure business anthropology
as more than a subfield in applied anthropology
and remodel the ethnography of business in the
context of China’s social and economic
transition.
 The program of business anthropology will have
the following components: economic
anthropology; the anthropology of social
organization and work; culture and consumption;
globalization and local transformation.
Reconfiguring Business Anthropology at
Fudan University (2006-present)
The Cultural Dynamics of the Chinese
Marketplace
Ex1: Fudan-Intel Rural China ICT Research
Ex 2: Fudan-Microsoft Project on Youth Culture
@ Fudan University
Ex 3: Redefining McJobs in Shanghai
Ex 4: Ethnographic Aspects of World Expo 2010
Key terms used in this course
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Anthropology (human)
 Sociology (individual and society)
 “sociological imagination”
 Ethnography (writing, interpreting and
analyzing “cultures”)
 Culture
 Globalization and local transformations
The Validity of “Soft Data”
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Key features of anthropology/sociology for business:
1) ethnography and observation as ways of obtaining data;
2) cross-cultural expertise;
3) focus on cultural diversity
 Anthropological skills for the corporate world:
- Characteristic observation in natural settings
- Cross-cultural perspectives allow businesses
that seek to know why other nations have
higher/lower productivity
- Better understanding of customer and find
new products and markets that engineers
might never have imagined.
Ex. Market System vs. Marketplace
Market System vs. Marketplace
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Market system (as an abstraction)
Ideally, a market system is an institution with selfregulating prices that vary according to supply and
demand on the part of both producers and consumers.
Demand is determined by scarcity/abundance, price, and
preferences; supply is determined by scarcity/abundance,
price, and sensitivity to demand.
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Marketplace
-specific and real locales where buyers and
sellers engage in exchange transactions
-marketplace/bazaar societies (marketplace as
the only medium for transfer of goods & services)
-local / operating on cycles / price negotiation
Seeing the Big Picture:
the Promise of the Sociological Imagination
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How do we develop a sociological perspective & cultivate our
sociological imagination (Mills 1959)?
Requires us to think ourselves away from the familiar routines of
our daily lives in order to look at them anew; see ourselves as
products of socialization, as persons constrained by norms and
mores, shaped by history and social events (Personal troubles
vs. societal issues)
No matter how private or personal our actions we can
understand ourselves much better if we place ourselves within
a larger framework
How meanings are constructed in contexts
Basic sociological insight: human behavior is largely shaped by
the groups to which people belong and by the social
interactions that takes place within those groups
Examples: Sociology of Coffee; Tainted baby formula scare
The sociological imagination…
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allows us to stand apart mentally from our own place in
society and to see with a new clarity the link between
personal and social events.
 Our lives are shaped by historical & social forces they
have little personal control.
 When a society becomes industrialized, rural peasants
become urban workers (migratory movement in postreform China), whether they like it or not. When a
nation goes to war, spouses are widowed and children
grow up as orphans for reasons that are beyond their
personal power to control. When an economy sags,
workers are thrown out of their jobs, no matter how
efficiently they have performed them.
From Wall Street to the street: A cabdriver's tale
Analyzing the
individual and social
patterns that produce
unemployment.
Lonely Planet's Best in Travel 2014 - top 10 cities
The buzz about Shanghai is electric: welcome to the city
everyone wants to see (and be seen in). If China is the
world’s industrial motor, Shanghai is China’s highperformance V8. The metro system – which ran to a
modest three lines in 2000 – will open the 59km-long, highspeed line 16 by 2014; it’s now the third-longest network in
the world. Upon completion, the twisting 121-storey
Shanghai Tower will be the tallest building in China, the
second-tallest in the world and the jewel in the Lujiazui
crown. It will house the highest hotel in the world, a
coveted trophy Shanghai has held twice over the past 15
years. To cap it all, Shanghai recently expanded its visafree transit quota to 72 hours for citizens of 45 nations,
so if you’re heading on somewhere else and don’t have a
Chinese visa, you can still get a three-day look in.
Ex: anti-smoking campaign vs.
cigarette consumption
What does it MEAN to be tanned?
The sociological imagination…
Coffee in Sociological Imagination

Is drinking a cup of coffee
an uninteresting piece of
behavior?
1) Coffee is not just a
refreshment. It has
symbolic value as part of
our routine social activities
(coffee meeting). 2) Coffee
as “drug” food. 3) an
individual who drinks a
cup of coffee is caught up
in a complicated set of
social and economic
relationships stretching
across the world. The
production, transport, and
distribution of coffee
requires continuous global
transactions between
people thousands of miles
away…
Why Culture Matters
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Human adaptation and CULTURE
In ordinary speech (both ENG & CHN), the word
“culture” is used to refer to sophisticated tastes in art,
literature, or music. But the sociological/ anthropological
use of the term is much WIDER and implies that anyone
participates in society is “cultured.”
Culture includes EVERYTHING that a human society
produces and shares
Culture (way of life, “codes or blue prints” of societies) vs
society (people who shares a culture)
Cultures cannot exist without societies.
Culture isn’t one “thing” but an elaborate system of
mental and physical “things.”
Defining “culture” scientifically…
“Culture (or civilization) …
is that complex whole which includes knowledge,
belief, arts, morals, law, custom, and any other
capabilities and habits acquired by man as a
member of society”
(E. B. Tylor 1871:1)
- Culture is learned, shared, and symbolic
- ‘soft’ data
Culture is LEARNED
Why is cultural learning (“enculturation”)
unique to human beings?
 19th century evolutionists’ notion of the “psychic
unity of man” : ALL HUMAN POPULATIONS
SHARE THE SAME CAPACITY FOR
CULTURE
 NOTE: “cultural / social learning” in
anthropology means much more than
“文 化 ”/literacy
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Culture is SHARED
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The transmission of culture unifies groups of
people with common experiences
 Cases in point: Touching, Affection, Love, and
Sex.
Even such things as apparently "natural" as
emotions and sex can be culturally constructed!
North Americans do not clearly differentiate among
physical expressions of affection as opposed to
sex, while Brazilians do.
Culture Is SYMBOLIC
The uniquely human ability to use symbols is
the basis of culture (Leslie White 1959)
“It is impossible for a dog, horse, or even an ape
to have any understanding of the meaning of
the sign of the cross to a Christian, or of the
fact that black (white among the Chinese is the
color of mourning.
 The ARBITARY relationship between the
signifier and the signified
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The arbitrary relationship between the
signifier and the signified
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“saturated symbols”
Globalism and Local Cultures
Culture and Biology
 How
basic “natural” demands of human life
are met in different ways because of
CULTURALLY DEFINED VARIATIONS
EX. universal human functions we must
perform in order to stay alive:
EATING, DRINKING, SLEEPING,
ELIMINATION
Culture and Nature /Biology
The cultural construction of the “natural” /biological.
EX. Variety of ways in which different societies satisfy
basic biological drives such as hunger.
Human ability to digest many types of plants and
animals for nutrition AND the different eating
behaviors and food preferences throughout the world
Food labeling in the US: edible or inedible
Eating insects and insect larvae (a regional delicacy in
China and many other countries); horse and dogs as
pets in the US vs. the consumption of horsemeat & dog
meat.
In other words, biology and culture contribute to
particular forms of human behavior.
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Culture and Nature (the raw & the cooked)
Is EATING simply a biological process?
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Culture shapes what one eats, how one eats, and
when one eats, and affects ideas of eating.
Meat eating is a not a necessity for survival
(vegetarianism vs. meat hunger)
Preferences about what “tastes good”
- Chinese and French attitudes toward cheese)
- “freshness” of food
Difficulty of categorizing basic types of tastes (sweet,
sour, bitter, salty, pungent, tart …..)
RULES about eating (ex. Use of hand in India)
Ex. An Anthropological/Sociological Approach to Obesity
1)
2)
3)
4)
Obesity is a Western problem and that in many nonWestern cultures, fat symbolizes beauty and fertility
The slender, youthful-looking figure is NOW desired
by women of all ages.
Although slenderness becomes a symbol of social
status, the food of the wealthy is still rich and
plentiful…a sign of conspicuous consumption
…cultural factors such as the knowledge of nutrition
and of the relationship of obesity to disease and
longevity and the popularization of the knowledge,
our cult of youthfulness (female), our class
stereotypes all tend to keep people away from taking
advantage of the opportunities to gorge on food…
Culture and Body Image
Drinking
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The cultural elaboration of drinking is just as complex
as for eating. Every culture defines the appropriate
substances to drink, when to drink, and with whom.
- French consumption of table wine with meals; Water
consumption during meals in the US (vs. drinking water
after dinner in India); different categories of people
(gender/age/class) drink different beverages (“sparkling
water from France”); “social drinking” (coffee, tea, beer,
or vodka) creates & reinforces bonds.
Example: Red Bull TV commercials (USA & China)
Sleeping
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Cultural aspects to sleep (including question of
who sleeps with whom)
Ex. Rules about where infants/children should
sleep (with parents or in a separate room)
 Culture shapes the amount of time a person
sleeps
Ex. Women in rural India (and China) sleep
fewer hours than men; “A-type” males in
corporate North America sleep few hours and
are proud of the fact…
Co-sleeping” vs. the separation of mother and infant
Increases the length of the
infant’s crying bouts
- “crib death”
- Benefits of frequent nursing
(breast-feeding vs. bottle feeding)
-
Elimination
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How does culture affect the elimination process?
Ex. Ideas of toilet training / bedwetting vary;
where to eliminate (gender/age); practice in rural
India (vs. “western” practice)
Cultural attitudes toward products of elimination
(urine and feces):
- “dirty” “polluting” “disgusting”
- Medicinal & symbolic values
Elimination
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How does culture affect the elimination process?
Ex. Ideas of toilet training / bedwetting vary;
where to eliminate (gender/age); practice in
rural India (vs. “western” practice)
Cultural attitudes toward products of elimination
(urine and feces):
- “dirty” “polluting” “disgusting”
- Medicinal & symbolic values
Cultural differences in preferences to
SMELL TYPES
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Do cultural preferences influence fragrance /
deodorant marketing?
Food as a “cultural construction”
The Fortune Cookie Chronicles (Jennifer Lee 8)
Globalization and Local Transformations:
MECHANISM OF CULTURE CHANGE
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Diffusion (“cultural borrowing”)
“Cultural borrowing”
The Culture of “Faking” in
the East
In THE KNOCKOFF
ECONOMY (Oxford University
Press, September 2012), law
professors Kal Raustiala and
Christopher Sprigman reveal the
hidden inner workings of
disciplines ranging from fashion
to finance to font design,
provocatively concluding that
the freedom to copy and bring
knockoffs to market benefits
creators and consumers alike
www.theknockoffeconomy.com
Investigating “Knock-offs”/Copy cats
Observations
Elegant, spacious setting
Exclusive
Location (compared to fake)
Customers: Wealthy Chinese
people
Hard to tell difference between
fake A++ and real
Trained and well-dressed staff
Benchmark Analysis
FAKE
Yi-Chieh Lin reveals how the
entrepreneurial energy of emerging
markets, such as China, includes
the opportunity to profit from fake
stuff, that is counterfeit goods that
rely on our fascination with brand
names. Students will discover how
the names and logos embroidered
and printed on their own clothes
carry their own price tag above and
beyond the use value of the
products themselves. The book
provides a wonderful introduction
for students to global markets and
their role in determining how they
function.
Culture as the “Soft
Data”
Language
Ideas
Norms & values
Material Culture
Soft Data
Information in raw or
unorganized form (such as
alphabets, numbers, or
symbols) that refer to, or
represent, conditions, ideas,
or objects.
。
www.businessdictionary.com
Moon Cakes
Moon cakes and other Asian delicacies as targets for food
inspectors in L.A. (LA Times)
Ethnography & Fieldwork
BRONIALAW MALINOWSKI
(1884-1942)
“participant observation”
- immersing oneself in the local community (longterm residence)
- working through the native language
Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922)
the goal of ethnographic fieldwork is to
“grasp the native point of view,
his relation to life, to realize his vision of
his world” (1922: 25)
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FIELDWORK
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Gain specialist knowledge by going to live in the
society of their choice
 Go for a year or more & try to live as far as
possible as the people they are interested
 Find out exactly what it is like to be a member of
the society in question
 Learn the language of the people concerned
(working with interpreters gives a wholly
inadequate view)
NOTE: Social closeness distinguishes sociologists /
anthropologists from other social scientists
Ethnographic Research: A Key to Strategy
(March 2009 Harvard Business Review)

Ken Anderson
- Corporate ethnography isn’t just for innovation anymore. It’s
central to gaining a full understanding of your customers and
the business itself. The ethnographic work at my company,
Intel, and other firms now informs functions such as strategy
and long-range planning.
- Our goal is to see people’s behavior on their terms, not ours.
While this observational method may appear inefficient, it
enlightens us about the context in which customers would use a
new product and the meaning that product might hold in their
lives.
Anthropology Inc.
(March 2013 The Atlantic )
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ReD’s entry into consulting represents an attempt to
match the results of these titans without relying
heavily on math and spreadsheets, and instead
focusing on what anthropologists call “participant
observation.” This method consists, generally, of
living among one’s research subjects, at least briefly.
Such immersive experiences lead not only to greater
intimacy and trust, but also to a slowly emerging
picture of the subjects’ everyday lives and thoughts,
complete with truths about them that they themselves
might not know.
How does ethnography complement
traditional qualitative research ?
Study the fish
‘Classical’ qualitative
research
Hang out with the fish
Ethnographic ‘immersion’
Both approaches are valid, but they uncover
different things
Product
From the time they wake up in the morning, consumer are taking
actions to keep mosquitoes away, mostly are non-product actions!
“I use broken coil to have
short duration prevention”
“My kids apply OFF
personal repellent before
going to school”
Non -Product
Time
access
“I inspect the room,
plug in 1-2 hrs prior
sending kids to bed”.
“I closed door & window
and spray aerosol around
the corners”
“I use electric racket when
I saw it flying around”
Cleaning
School time
Fumigation
Morning ………………………..
Afternoon …………
....
Family time
Evening ………
Bedtime
Night………………
“I turn on the fan to keep
the mosquitoes away”
“I wipe the floor with
bleach to repel the insects.”
“I wipe the furniture with
vinegar to repel mosquitoes”
“Cleaning is part of my pest
control routine.”
“I dress my kids with long
pants to decrease the
opportunity of getting bites
in school”.
“I have to close the
door& windows to
keep mosquitoes
outside before sunset”
“I pull down mosquitoes net,
check through the net”
“I put on long sleeve pajama /
cover the kids with bed sheet
to keep mosquitoes away”
Leverage non-product actions into product usage design to address touch points needs
Gathering, Integrating, Synthesizing and
Analyzing Data

Example: Disney increases viewership
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Disney hired a team of anthropologists to help it
rejuvenate its appeal to a stagnating audience: 6-14 year
old boys.
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Boys tend to be less open than girls in regular surveys,
making anthropological methods better for
understanding their interests.

The result? Disney created a new television channel,
Disney XD, tailored toward the interests of boys.
Disney has also seen a 10% increase in male viewership.
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Anthropology for Businesses • April 6, 2017
Ethnographic perspectives

Social sensitivity
 Observation
 Accuracy in interpreting behavior and
information (soft data)
 Contextualizing
 Challenging assumptions (common sense &
biases)
 Problem-solving
An ability to get along well with people.
An awareness of cultural differences.
Open mindedness.
Tolerance of foreign cultures.
Adaptability to new cultures, ideas, and challenges.
An ability to adjust quickly to new conditions.
An interest in facts, not blind assumptions.
Previous business experience.
Previous experience with foreign cultures.
An ability to learn foreign languages.