For example, when a womanfrom a nea

For example, when a woman
from a nearby city came to buy a coat for her father, Big Sister Zhao
recruited an appropriately sized male shopper to serve as a model. ‘Sir, sir,
_________
would you come over here for a minute and help us out?’ Zhao called out
to the tall man. ‘We’d like to use you as a model. We spotted you from
quite a ways away.’ He was happy to help, the coat fit, and the woman
made the purchase. As our model departed, Zhao thanked him and said,
‘Sorry for holding you up!’
Passing customers would frequently stop to observe happenings on the
sales floor, and customers would freely insert themselves into ongoing inter-
actions between sales clerks and other shoppers. Sometimes this could
provide a seemingly objective, third-party opinion that would smooth a
purchase. For instance, as an elderly couple considered a men’s coat, the
woman noticed the slit in the back of the coat and remarked loudly, ‘Cold!
Won’t it be cold this way?’ To my surprise, a passing customer, an older man,
intervened. He stopped and explained earnestly, ‘It won’t be cold, the slit
only opens when you sit down, it’s there to protect the zipper. These things
have their logic.’ This explanation seemed to satisfy the woman. The passing
customer began to admire the coat. ‘It’s really not expensive!’, he exclaimed,
adding, ‘And the workmanship is quite good. It’s really a nice coat!’
In short, Harbin No. X was a public space in which strangers, customers,
and workers alike regularly engaged in friendly, if brief, interactions.
These interactions were partly what identified the store as ‘massified’
(
dazhonghua
, a term that evokes the socialist, revolutionary ‘masses’), as
one manager pointed out to me. In addition, unlike many new department
stores in China, management at the state-owned retailer was lax, and so
workers were
reqing
with customers when they felt so disposed – and a bit
rude when they did not. The sociability that
reqing
represented was meant
to be reciprocal between customer and clerk, and failure by a customer to
respond to
reqing
could be viewed as a breach of etiquette. For instance, a
skeptical customer read the tags on a coat (which listed the filling as 90
percent down and 10 percent feathers) and asked, ‘What if they just write
anything they want on these tags (
suibian xie
)?’ Big Sister Zhao’s reply was
in the form of a clever pun: ‘A young lady might wear a
suibian
[braid],
but the information on the coat tags is not
suibian
[casually (written)]!’ The
customer, however, remained surly and skeptical, and after he left Zhao
remarked that he ‘wasn’t a thing (
wanyir
)’. I was confused, so Zhao smiled
slyly and explained, ‘He wasn’t a thing (
dongxi
) [an insult in Chinese], after
we treated him so well he didn’t buy anything!’
Conclusion
The Harbin No. X Department Store perched precariously at the cusp of
two eras of retailing. Changes to the business of buying and selling
consumer goods in urban China has resulted in the rapid expansion of
Ethnography
7(4)
482
461-492 073147 Hanser (D) 7/11/06 08:52 Page 482
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by HARWAN ANDI KUNNA on November 3, 2007
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choice for consumers – in terms of both the kinds of goods available and
the places in which to purchase them – and has been accompanied, at the
retail sector’s lower echelons, by uncertainties about price, quality, and the
authenticity of goods. At Harbin No. X, the consequence was a crisis of
trust, as shoppers carried their anxieties and distrust of the marketplace
into the state-owned store. An institution that had once commanded
customer patronage by virtue of scarce competition and enjoyed high status
as one of the premier state-run retail outlets in the city, the department store
could no longer elicit trust by virtue of its place in the shortage-plagued
Chinese state socialist universe.
As Harbin No. X tracked a descending trajectory in the city’s retail field,
the dynamics of buying and selling had begun to dramatically change for
store workers. The counter-strategies workers developed in order to cope
with this crisis of trust were, of course, strategies to sell merchandise in a
newly competitive context. But borrowing from the theories of Pierre
Bourdieu, I have also suggested that sales clerk practices can be seen as a
form of ‘distinction work’ that sought to re-establish the sharp symbolic
and moral boundaries that once set Harbin No. X apart, and above, the
expanding private retail sector.
I have also argued, again drawing from Bourdieu’s conceptual tools, that
the strategies sales clerks relied upon to counter customer suspicion and
distrust simultaneously traced the downward trajectory of China’s urban
working class. At the same time they distinguished Harbin No. X from its
new competitors, sales clerks also engaged in a nostalgic strategy of
representation that portrayed Harbin No. X as still endowed with the
symbolic capital of state socialism. Sales clerks endeavored to create a space,
on the sales floor, characterized by a set of earthy, sociable interactions that
recollected an imagined, pre-marketized golden era of genuine warmth and
feeling among strangers – among, really, the urban working class. Here we
find, much as Michele Lamont’s work (1992, 2000) would lead us to expect,
that moral boundaries are laden with class-coded meanings and cultural
practices (see also Lamont and Molnár, 2002). We find, however, that moral
boundaries are shaped by the social trajectories of the groups they define.
In a context of downward mobility, workers deployed the reconstructed
symbolic capitals of both a state-owned enterprise and traditional working-
class social relations.
At the same time, it is important to note that these
reqing
performances
at Harbin No. X were not full-fledged, explicit examples of nostalgia or
resistance like those described by Rofel (1999), O’Brien and Li (1999), Yang
(2003), and others. Workers did not produce the kind of articulated critical
consciousness that Ching Kwan Lee (2000, 2002) identified in restive
portions of China’s laid-off state industrial workers. Rather, sales clerks at
Harbin No. X engaged in a more subtle counter-strategy of remembering
Hanser
■
Sales floor trajectories
483
461-492 073147 Hanser (D) 7/11/06 08:52 Page 483
© 2006 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
by HARWAN ANDI KUNNA on November 3, 2007
http://eth.sagepub.com
Downloaded from
that traced a trajectory of social change and the rise of new patterns of class
stratification in urban China. Indeed, it was only within a broader social
context of postsocialist socio-economic change and the general disenchant-
ment of the urban working class that
reqing
could actually take on the
significance of a practice of class distinction.
Bourdieu noted that ‘to exist within a social space . . . is to differ, to be
different’ (1998: 9). As Pun Ngai has noted of contemporary China, ‘The
play of difference is highly political’ (1999: 11). Bourdieu took very
seriously the ways in which symbolic power and struggles over legitimate
representations of the social world are critical to the reproduction of
inequality (e.g. Bourdieu, 1990). Symbolic boundaries are important in
large part because they can translate into social boundaries (Lamont and
Molnár, 2002); powerful groups rely on ‘their legitimate culture’ not only
to mark difference but also to maintain and reproduce group membership
and its privileges as they convert ‘symbolic distinction into [social] closure’
(p. 172).
In the context of China’s economic reforms and the shift to a market
economy, working-class efforts to conserve socialist era symbolic capital
can ironically speed up its devaluation. Increasingly, people and settings that
maintain a perceived continuity with China’s socialist past are marked, and
mark themselves, as belonging to the past. Like the ‘straightforward’ Polish
workers associated with socialism in Elizabeth Dunn’s research (1999),
Harbin residents frequently described the sales clerks at Harbin No. X as
‘honest’ and ‘frank’ (
laoshi
), characteristics that also marked them as
belonging to the simpler, less sophisticated socialist era. In an increasingly
marketized society, being
laoshi
also differentiated these working-class
clerks from more ‘modern’ and prosperous groups. As Lida Junghans
(2001) argues, the terms ‘plan’ and ‘market’ are special temporal distinc-
tions in China that have come to settle upon different Chinese bodies,
positioning them in an imagined timeframe that also maps their locations
– some advantaged, some disadvantaged – in contemporary Chinese society.
At Harbin No. X, the strategies sales clerk engaged in to assert their value
and moral worth in the here and now may reflect a cruel irony about the
inconvertibility of socialist ‘capital’.

Hasil (Bahasa Indonesia) 1:

Sebagai contoh, ketika seorang wanitadari datang kota terdekat untuk membeli sebuah mantel untuk ayahnya, Zhao kakakmerekrut pembelanja laki-laki berukuran tepat untuk melayani sebagai model. ' Sir, sir, _________ akan Anda datang ke sini selama satu menit dan membantu kami keluar?' Zhao memanggilkepada orang yang tinggi. ' Kami ingin menggunakan Anda sebagai model. Kita melihat Anda daricara cukup berjarak.' Ia merasa bahagia untuk membantu, mantel yang cocok, dan wanitamelakukan pembelian. Model kami pergi, Zhao berterima kasih kepadanya dan berkata,'Maaf untuk memegang Anda!'Melewati pelanggan akan sering berhenti untuk mengamati kejadian-kejadian padalantai penjualan dan pelanggan bebas akan memasukkan diri mereka ke berkelanjutan inter-tindakan antara Panitera penjualan dan pembeli lain. Kadang-kadang ini bisamemberikan pendapat yang tampaknya objektif, pihak ketiga yang akan haluspembelian. Misalnya, sebagai pasangan tua dianggap mantel laki-laki,wanita melihat celah di belakang mantel dan berkomentar, ' dingin!Tidak akan dingin dengan cara ini?' Untuk mengejutkan saya, pelanggan lewat, pria yang lebih tua,campur tangan. Dia berhenti dan dijelaskan dengan sungguh-sungguh, ' itu tidak akan menjadi dingin, celahhanya buka ketika Anda duduk, ini ada untuk melindungi ritsleting. Hal inimemiliki logika mereka.' Penjelasan ini tampak untuk memenuhi wanita. LewatPelanggan mulai untuk mengagumi mantel. 'Hal ini benar-benar tidak mahal!', ia berseru,menambahkan, ' dan pengerjaan cukup baik. It's really nice mantel!'In short, Harbin No. X was a public space in which strangers, customers,and workers alike regularly engaged in friendly, if brief, interactions.These interactions were partly what identified the store as ‘massified’(dazhonghua, a term that evokes the socialist, revolutionary ‘masses’), asone manager pointed out to me. In addition, unlike many new departmentstores in China, management at the state-owned retailer was lax, and soworkers were reqing with customers when they felt so disposed – and a bitrude when they did not. The sociability that reqing represented was meantto be reciprocal between customer and clerk, and failure by a customer torespond to reqingcould be viewed as a breach of etiquette. For instance, askeptical customer read the tags on a coat (which listed the filling as 90percent down and 10 percent feathers) and asked, ‘What if they just writeanything they want on these tags (suibian xie)?’ Big Sister Zhao’s reply wasin the form of a clever pun: ‘A young lady might wear a suibian[braid],but the information on the coat tags is not suibian[casually (written)]!’ Thecustomer, however, remained surly and skeptical, and after he left Zhaoremarked that he ‘wasn’t a thing (wanyir)’. I was confused, so Zhao smiledslyly and explained, ‘He wasn’t a thing (dongxi) [an insult in Chinese], afterwe treated him so well he didn’t buy anything!’ConclusionThe Harbin No. X Department Store perched precariously at the cusp oftwo eras of retailing. Changes to the business of buying and sellingconsumer goods in urban China has resulted in the rapid expansion ofEthnography7(4)482461-492 073147 Hanser (D) 7/11/06 08:52 Page 482© 2006 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.by HARWAN ANDI KUNNA on November 3, 2007 http://eth.sagepub.comDownloaded from choice for consumers – in terms of both the kinds of goods available andthe places in which to purchase them – and has been accompanied, at theretail sector’s lower echelons, by uncertainties about price, quality, and theauthenticity of goods. At Harbin No. X, the consequence was a crisis oftrust, as shoppers carried their anxieties and distrust of the marketplaceinto the state-owned store. An institution that had once commandedcustomer patronage by virtue of scarce competition and enjoyed high statusas one of the premier state-run retail outlets in the city, the department storecould no longer elicit trust by virtue of its place in the shortage-plaguedChinese state socialist universe.As Harbin No. X tracked a descending trajectory in the city’s retail field,the dynamics of buying and selling had begun to dramatically change forstore workers. The counter-strategies workers developed in order to copewith this crisis of trust were, of course, strategies to sell merchandise in akonteks baru kompetitif. Tapi pinjaman dari teori-teori PierreBourdieu, saya juga menyarankan bahwa praktek-praktek pramuniaga dapat dilihat sebagaibentuk 'perbedaan pekerjaan' yang dicari untuk membangun kembali tajam simbolisdan batas-batas moral yang pernah mengatur Harbin No. X terpisah, dan di atas,memperluas sektor ritel pribadi.Saya juga berpendapat, lagi Menggambar dari alat-alat konseptual Bourdieu's, yangStrategi penjualan Panitera diandalkan untuk counter pelanggan kecurigaan danketidakpercayaan secara bersamaan dilacak lintasan ke bawah Cina perkotaankelas pekerja. Pada saat yang sama mereka dibedakan Harbin No. X dari yangpesaing baru, penjualan Panitera juga terlibat dalam strategi nostalgiarepresentasi yang digambarkan Harbin No. X sebagai masih diberkahi denganibukota simbolis sosialisme negara. Penjualan Panitera berusaha untuk menciptakan ruang,di lantai penjualan, yang dicirikan oleh serangkaian bersahaja, ramah interaksi yangmengenang masa keemasan membayangkan, pra-marketized kehangatan asli danmerasa di antara orang asing-antara, benar-benar, kelas pekerja di perkotaan. Di sini kitamenemukan, banyak sebagai Michele Lamont karya (1992, 2000) akan membawa kita untuk mengharapkan,batas-batas moral sarat dengan makna kelas-kode dan budayapraktek-praktek (Lihat juga Lamont dan Molnár, 2002). Kami menemukan, bagaimanapun, bahwa moralbatas-batas yang dibentuk oleh lintasan sosial kelompok-kelompok mereka menentukan.Dalam konteks ke bawah mobilitas pekerja dikerahkan direkonstruksisymbolic capitals of both a state-owned enterprise and traditional working-class social relations.At the same time, it is important to note that these reqing performancesat Harbin No. X were not full-fledged, explicit examples of nostalgia orresistance like those described by Rofel (1999), O’Brien and Li (1999), Yang(2003), and others. Workers did not produce the kind of articulated criticalconsciousness that Ching Kwan Lee (2000, 2002) identified in restiveportions of China’s laid-off state industrial workers. Rather, sales clerks atHarbin No. X engaged in a more subtle counter-strategy of rememberingHanser■Sales floor trajectories483461-492 073147 Hanser (D) 7/11/06 08:52 Page 483© 2006 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.by HARWAN ANDI KUNNA on November 3, 2007 http://eth.sagepub.comDownloaded from that traced a trajectory of social change and the rise of new patterns of classstratification in urban China. Indeed, it was only within a broader socialcontext of postsocialist socio-economic change and the general disenchant-ment of the urban working class that reqingcould actually take on thesignificance of a practice of class distinction.Bourdieu noted that ‘to exist within a social space . . . is to differ, to bedifferent’ (1998: 9). As Pun Ngai has noted of contemporary China, ‘Theplay of difference is highly political’ (1999: 11). Bourdieu took veryseriously the ways in which symbolic power and struggles over legitimaterepresentations of the social world are critical to the reproduction ofinequality (e.g. Bourdieu, 1990). Symbolic boundaries are important inlarge part because they can translate into social boundaries (Lamont andMolnár, 2002); powerful groups rely on ‘their legitimate culture’ not onlyto mark difference but also to maintain and reproduce group membershipand its privileges as they convert ‘symbolic distinction into [social] closure’(p. 172).In the context of China’s economic reforms and the shift to a marketeconomy, working-class efforts to conserve socialist era symbolic capitalcan ironically speed up its devaluation. Increasingly, people and settings thatmaintain a perceived continuity with China’s socialist past are marked, andmark themselves, as belonging to the past. Like the ‘straightforward’ Polishworkers associated with socialism in Elizabeth Dunn’s research (1999),Harbin residents frequently described the sales clerks at Harbin No. X as‘honest’ and ‘frank’ (laoshi), characteristics that also marked them asbelonging to the simpler, less sophisticated socialist era. In an increasinglymarketized society, being laoshialso differentiated these working-classclerks from more ‘modern’ and prosperous groups. As Lida Junghans(2001) argues, the terms ‘plan’ and ‘market’ are special temporal distinc-tions in China that have come to settle upon different Chinese bodies,positioning them in an imagined timeframe that also maps their locations– some advantaged, some disadvantaged – in contemporary Chinese society.At Harbin No. X, the strategies sales clerk engaged in to assert their valueand moral worth in the here and now may reflect a cruel irony about theinconvertibility of socialist ‘capital’.