Abstract
Since the implementation of the Opening and Reform Policy, Chinese urbanism has witnessed the rise of a consumer society. As mindful and reflective social agents, consumers are engaged in the refashioning of collective values and identities through activities and practices of consumption. This chapter examines the zeal of young, wealthy and educated urbanites in the post-reform urban China for the coffeehouse, which is a locus of meeting between globalized meanings and locally mediated practices. Above all, the chapter asks whether coffeehouses, as lived habitus constituted by situated rituals, customs, codes and cultural meanings, contribute to the formation of collective values and identities that potentially lead us to identify coffeehouse consumers as a neo-tribe.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Adams, W. H. D. (2012). Good Queen Anne; or Men and Manners, Life and Letters in England’s Augustan Age, Volume 1. London: Hardpress Publishing.
Allsop, K. (1958). The Angry Decade: A Survey of the Cultural Revolt of the Nineteen Fifties. London: Peter Owen.
Aubert-Gamet, V., & Cova, B. (1999). Servicesapes: From Modern Non-places to Postmodern Common Places. Journal of Business Research, 26(3), 37–45.
Bao, Y. (2001). Bars of Shanghai: Space, Consumption and Imagination. Jiangsu: Jiangsu People’s Publishing House. (In Chinese).
Bauman, Z. (1997). Post-modernity and Its Discontents. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bauman, Z. (1998). Work, Consumerism and the New Poor. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Belk, R. W., Wallendorf, M., & Sherry, J. F. (1989). The Sacred and the Profane in Consumer Behaviour: Theodicy on the Odyssey. Journal of Consumer Research, 16(1), 1–37.
Bennett, A. (1999). Subcultures of Neo-Tribes? Rethinking the Relationship Between Youth, Style and Musical Taste. Sociology, 33(53), 599–617.
Bennett, A. (2011). The Post-subcultural Turn: Some Reflections 10 Years On. Journal of Youth Studies, 14(5), 493–506.
Bourdieu, P. (1993). The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1996). Understanding. Theory, Culture & Society, 13(2), 17–37.
Buchanan, J. M. (1965). An Economic Theory of Clubs. Economica, 32(125), 1–14.
Chaney, D. (1996). Lifestyles. London: Routledge.
Connor, S. (1997). Postmodernist Culture: An Introduction to Theories of the Contemporary. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Cooper, S., McLoughlin, D., & Keating, A. (2005). Individual and Neo-Tribal Consumption: Tales from the Simpsons of Springfield. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 4(5), 330–344.
Coser, L. A. (1997). Men of Ideas: A Sociologist’s View. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Cova, B., & Cova, V. (2002). Tribal Marketing: The Tribalisation of Society and Its Impact on the Conduct of Marketing. European Journal of Marketing, 36(5/6), 595–620.
Douglas, M. (1996). Thought Styles. London: Sage.
Eijck, K., & Bargeman, B. (2004). The Changing Impact of Social Background on Lifestyle: ‘Culturalization’ Instead of Individualization? Poetics, 32(6), 439–461.
Ellis, A. (1956). The Penny Universities: A History of Coffee Houses. London: Secker & Warburg.
Featherstone, M. (1987). Lifestyle and Consumer Culture. Theory, Culture and Society, 4(1), 55–70.
Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and Self-Identity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday.
Goulding, C., & Shankar, A. (2011). Club Culture, Neotribalism and Ritualised Behaviour. Annals of Tourism Research, 38(4), 1435–1453.
Goulding, C., Shankar, A., & Elliott, R. (2002). Working Weeks, Club Weekends: Identities Fragmentation and the Emergence of New Communities. Consumption, Markets and Culture, 5(4), 261–284.
Habermas, J. (1989). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Enquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hardy, A., Gretzel, U., & Hanson, D. (2013). Travelling Neo-Tribes: Conceptualsing Recreational Vehicle Users. Journal of Tourism & Cultural Change, 11(1/2), 48–60.
Heath, S. (2004). Peer-Shared Households, Quasi-Communes and Neo-Tribes. Current Sociology, 52(2), 161–179.
Hetherington, K. (1998). Expressions of Identity: Space, Performance, Politics. London: Sage.
Hoggart, R. (1957). The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working-Life with Special Reference to Publications and Entertainments. London: Chatto and Windus.
Hu, X. (2011). Urban Tension: Coffee Houses and Transformation of Lifestyles. Nanjing: Southeast University Press. (In Chinese).
Hughson, J. (2007). A Tale of Two Tribes: Expressive Fandom in Australian Soccer’s a-League. Culture, Sport, Society, 2(3), 10–30.
Jenkins, R. (1992). Pierre Bourdieu. London: Routledge.
Ji, S., & Duan, J. (2012). Spatial Consumption: A New Prospect of Urban Development from Perspective of Consumer Culture. Nanjing: Southeast University Press. (In Chinese).
Li, X., & Yan, C. (2014). Cultural Attitudes of Middle Class. Jiangsu Social Sciences, 4, 131–138. (In Chinese).
Maffesoli, M. (1993). The Shadow of Dionysus: A Contribution to the Sociology of the Orgy. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Maffesoli, M. (1996). The Times of the Tribes. London: Sage.
Maffesoli, M. (2000). L’instant éternel. le retour du tragique dans les societies postmodernes. Paris: Denoël.
Mills, C. W. (1951). White Collar: The American Middle Classes. Cambridge: Oxford University Press.
Savage, M., Warde, A., & Ward, K. (1993). Urban Sociology, Capitalism and Modernity. London: Macmillan Education UK.
Simmel, G. (2000). Metropolis and Mental Life. In G. Bridge & S. Watson (Eds.), A Companion to the City (pp. 11–20). Oxford: Blackwell.
Simpson, P. (2008). Chronic Everyday Life: Rhythmanalysing Street Performance. Social & Cultural Geography, 9(7), 807–829.
Thompson, C. J., & Holt, D. B. (1996). Communities and Consumption: Research on Consumer Strategies for Constructing Communal Relationships in a Postmodern World. Advances in Consumer Research, 23(1), 204–205.
Tomlinson, M. (2003). Lifestyle and Social Class. European Sociological Review, 19(1), 97–111.
Turner, V. (1974). The Ritual Process. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Veblen, T. B. (1918). The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions. New York: B. W. Huebsch.
Weaver, A. (2011). The Fragmentation of Markets, Neo-Tribes, Nostalgia, and the Culture of Celebrity: The Rise of Themed Cruises. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Management, 18(1), 54–60.
Webster, C., Wu, F., & Zhao, Y. (2006). China’s Modern Gated Cities. In G. Glasze, C. Webster, & K. Frantz (Eds.), Private Cities: Global and Local Perspectives (pp. 153–169). London: Routledge.
White, N. R., & White, P. B. (2004). Travel as Transition: Identity and Place. Annals of Tourism Research, 31(1), 200–218.
Wolff, K. H. (1950). The Sociology of Georg Simmel. New York: Free Press.
Wynne, D. (1990). Leisure, Lifestyle and the New Middle Class. London: Routledge.
Zhang, Y. (1999). Open the Door of Coffee Houses: Cultural History of 350 Years of Continental Europe. Shanghai: Orient Publishing Centre. (In Chinese).
Zielke, P., & Waibel, M. (2015). Creative Spaces and the Local State in China: The Case of Guangzhou’s Redtory Art + Design Factory. City, Culture & Society, 6(2), 27–35.
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank the National Science Foundation of China (Grant No: 41401139) for sponsoring the research.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lv, Z., Qian, J. (2018). A Coffeehouse Neo-Tribe in the Making: Exploring a Fluid Cultural Public Space in Post-Reform Chinese Urbanism. In: Hardy, A., Bennett, A., Robards, B. (eds) Neo-Tribes. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68207-5_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68207-5_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-68206-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-68207-5
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)