Reconceptualising prosumption beyond the ‘cultural turn’: Passive fashion prosumption in Korea and China

Abstract

While the processes of production and consumption are increasingly interrelated in society, there is a bourgeoning literature on consumers' increased power through the prosumption process and its evolutions and manifestations in various industries, markets and social contexts. This article challenges the theoretical assumption that all types of 'prosumers' become directly empowered by digital technology or have an equal opportunity to participate in the production process through Web 2.0. By extending Ritzer's reconceptualised idea of prosumption beyond the Global North, our research analysed two specific East Asian cases of fashion consumers whose countries shared rapidly rising economic status and cultural significance yet underwent different sociocultural trajectories. Using focus group interview, we investigated how these consumers interact differentially with the existing social structure, cultural values and other emergent social agents, and the extent to which they are able to exert an influence on the production of immaterial fashion. Contesting the expressivist take of the 'cultural turn' which overemphasises consumers' awareness of and control over symbolic fashion, this article's major theoretical contribution relates to symbolic consumption in the case of fashion -as a unique case blending material, immaterial and symbolic consumptionamong young Chinese and Korean consumers geographically located out of the global fashion centres. We explored prosumption's vicissitudes and limits as a theoretical concept, challenging its universality across different cultures, political-economic models and product categories, also demonstrating the multifaceted relationships and dissimilar types of power balances between production/producer and consumption/

Cultural globalization from the periphery: Translation practices of English-speaking K-pop fans

“…While user-generated content on social media may not always be produced with the intention of translating for an intended audience, they nevertheless have translative effects and are situated in the performance of translation practices. This suggests that the fans of K-pop, themselves, play a productive role (Ritzer and Jurgenson, 2010;Sugihartati, 2017;Tse and Tsang, 2018) in translating this multifaceted cultural product for its potential international consumers. From this perspective, the online fan-generated conversations around K-pop provide a rich field of paratexts to investigate translation practices that facilitate the transcultural intelligibility of K-pop beyond its national and regional boundaries.…”

“…The importance of consumer paratextual translations in shaping the meanings of global cultural products is further intensified with the growth of social media and its capacity to create networks of translation which often traverse national boundaries (Cova and Dalli, 2009;Huat and Jung, 2014). In the field of fandom studies, recent research also supports the meaning-making function of prosumption in the digital age (Sugihartati, 2017), as well as highlights the complexities of consumers taking a prosumer role within contexts beyond dominant centers of globalization (Tse and Tsang, 2018). For example, Denison (2011) highlights the role of fan subtitlers of Japanese anime as liminally situated fan prosumers, while Chen (2018) explores how fan prosumption among Chinese consumers of games, anime, novels, and comic books allows for poetic and tactical self-expression.…”

The Production of Contemporary Sociological Knowledge in Hong Kong

“…The rise of the middle class and urban workers has resulted in a myriad of consumption practices. Topics of particular interests include the cultural impact on organizational behaviour in life insurance firms (Chan, 2012), the subcultural consumption of fashion styles by Chinese rural migrant workers (Chew, 2010), digital money (McDonald, 2019) and comparative analysis of fashion and creative industries in China and South Korea (Tse & Tsang, 2018) Research has also delved into marginalized and stigmatized areas of studies.…”

“…The rise of the middle class and urban workers has resulted in a myriad of consumption practices. Topics of particular interests include the cultural impact on organizational behaviour in life insurance firms (Chan, 2012), the subcultural consumption of fashion styles by Chinese rural migrant workers (Chew, 2010), digital money (McDonald, 2019) and comparative analysis of fashion and creative industries in China and South Korea (Tse & Tsang, 2018) Research has also delved into marginalized and stigmatized areas of studies. In recent years, there have been ethnographies on social identities among male and female sex workers (Kong, 2016a; Tsang, 2019), the impact of marriage, work and discrimination facing marginalized groups as in lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender persons (L. K. Y. Kam, 2012; Kong, 2016b; Suen et al., 2020), asexuality (D. Wong, 2015), the intersection of masculinity and precarious employment among migrant taxi drivers (Choi, 2018).…”

The Cultural Sociology of China: Trajectory and Dynamics of a Burgeoning Field

“…Similarly, a recent Chinese-language article challenges Bourdieu’s class-based taste theory by showing that class attributes cannot predict the differences in art consumption among Chinese middle-class families (Fang, 2018). Tommy Tse, in contrast, shows a less empowered image of Chinese fashion “prosumers” who lack the awareness of their ability to influence fashion production and to redefine fashion conceptions (Tse and Tsang, 2018). Other studies attempt to depict a balanced image of the relative powers of producers and consumers.…”