This article considers experiences

This article considers experiences of social change and
downward social mobility in contemporary China by applying theoretical
tools from Bourdieu to understand service interactions at a large,
state-owned department store serving the urban working class. It
demonstrates how sales clerks sought to maintain an imagined space of
working-class security by emphasizing a set of fading social distinctions.
Sales clerks did so by calling forth the waning symbolic capital of state
socialism and translating it into a form of postsocialist, working-class
nostalgia. In an effort to appeal to a downwardly-mobile, working-class
clientele in a reconfigured marketplace, sales clerks simultaneously traced
the downward social trajectory of China’s diminished urban proletariat.
KEY WORDS
■
China, service work, postsocialism, social change,
social mobility, distinction, trajectory
Like many Communist and former-Communist countries, China’s shift
from a centralized, planned economy and a state socialist system to a
market-driven one has upended the categories that once organized people’s
everyday lives. Shopping plazas replace factories as urban landmarks.
Businessmen earn recognition as ‘model workers’. The urban working class,
once the vanguard of China’s revolutionary aspirations, is now viewed as
an inefficient and undisciplined workforce (Rofel, 1989), a ball-and-chain
on state enterprises and the urban economy. Whereas economic reforms
have brought growing prosperity and upward mobility for some, for practices in the inexpensive bazaars and small-scale private merchants they
increasingly patronized.
Sales clerk counter strategies that sought to affirm Harbin No. X as the
appropriate place for working-class consumers to shop, however, are best
understood within a theoretical framework of social distinctions, symbolic
boundaries, and social change. In particular, Bourdieu’s notion of ‘distinc-
tion’ helps explain why sales clerks worked to shore up the symbolic bound-
aries between Harbin No. X and its new competitors, especially the
geti
marketplace. At the same time, Bourdieu’s concept of ‘trajectory’ suggests
that the nostalgic appeals made by sales clerks to customers were shaped
not only by a reconfigured retail sector but also by the general downward
mobility of China’s urban working class.
Other scholars have argued that service settings and service interactions
can act as key sites for the production and reproduction of symbolic bound-
aries and social hierarchies (Williams, 2006; Sherman, forthcoming). I
suggest that at Harbin No. X, we find the rise of what can be character-
ized more specifically as what I term ‘distinction work’. Distinction work
is interactive service work (Leidner, 1993, 1996) that produces and recog-
nizes social distinctions. Here I borrow the idea Bourdieu developed in
Distinction
(1984) that the production and consumption of cultural goods
– in this case, the ‘good’ of customer service – involves a struggle over
symbolic categories that enables social groups to define and assert them-
selves through simultaneously hierarchical and relational differences
(Bourdieu, 1984, 1998). Distinction work is fundamentally about social
relations – among managers, workers, and customers, and even relations
among
workplaces, in that work activities communicate a relationship to
other workplaces and the people found there. Service work organized as
distinction work seeks to attract customers and win their loyalty by distin-
guishing a store and its clientele from settings located elsewhere – usually
lower down – in the social hierarchy.
Under China’s socialist planned economy, service sector work (and
retail work more specifically) was
not
distinction work: customers had few
choices and state retailers enjoyed a monopolistic stranglehold on the sale
of consumer goods. Customer patronage was a non-issue, and in fact the
service work performed inside settings like department stores was
conducted in ways far more similar to industrial work than it is today.
However, with the rise of a market economy and new social relations,
retailers compete in an increasingly stratified field of competition. In this
context, the state-sector retail workers I studied mobilized a set of distinc-
tions meant to stake out the store’s rightful place within a reconfigured
environment.
But sales clerk counter strategies also engaged in a form of postsocialist
nostalgia that only took on meaning in the context of a downward slide

Hasil (Bahasa Indonesia) 1:

Artikel ini menganggap pengalaman perubahan sosial danmobilitas ke bawah sosial di Cina kontemporer dengan menerapkan teoritisalat-alat dari Bourdieu untuk memahami Layanan interaksi di besar, milik negara Departemen toko melayani kelas pekerja di perkotaan. Itumenunjukkan bagaimana penjualan Panitera berusaha untuk mempertahankan ruang membayangkankeamanan kelas pekerja dengan menekankan satu set memudar perbedaan sosial.Penjualan Panitera melakukannya dengan memanggil sebagainya simbolis memudarnya ibukota negara bagiansosialisme dan menerjemahkannya ke dalam bentuk postsocialist, kelas pekerjanostalgia. Dalam upaya untuk menarik ke bawah-mobile, kelas pekerjaklien dalam pasar ulang, penjualan Panitera dilacak secara bersamaanlintasan ke bawah sosial Cina yang berkurang proletariat perkotaan.KATA KUNCI■Cina, pekerjaan pelayanan, postsocialism, sosial Ubah,gerak sosial, perbedaan, lintasanSeperti banyak Komunis dan negara-negara bekas-Komunis, pergeseran Cinadari ekonomi yang terpusat, direncanakan dan sistem sosialis negara untuksatu didorong pasar telah upended kategori yang pernah diselenggarakan rakyatkehidupan sehari-hari. Belanja plazas menggantikan pabrik sebagai markah tanah perkotaan.Pengusaha mendapatkan pengakuan sebagai 'model pekerja'. Kelas pekerja di perkotaan,setelah barisan depan Cina aspirasi revolusioner, kini dipandang sebagaitidak efisien dan tidak disiplin tenaga kerja (Rofel, 1989), sebuah bola-dan-rantaipada BUMN dan ekonomi perkotaan. Sedangkan reformasi ekonomihave brought growing prosperity and upward mobility for some, for practices in the inexpensive bazaars and small-scale private merchants theyincreasingly patronized.Sales clerk counter strategies that sought to affirm Harbin No. X as theappropriate place for working-class consumers to shop, however, are bestunderstood within a theoretical framework of social distinctions, symbolicboundaries, and social change. In particular, Bourdieu’s notion of ‘distinc-tion’ helps explain why sales clerks worked to shore up the symbolic bound-aries between Harbin No. X and its new competitors, especially the getimarketplace. At the same time, Bourdieu’s concept of ‘trajectory’ suggeststhat the nostalgic appeals made by sales clerks to customers were shapednot only by a reconfigured retail sector but also by the general downwardmobility of China’s urban working class.Other scholars have argued that service settings and service interactionscan act as key sites for the production and reproduction of symbolic bound-aries and social hierarchies (Williams, 2006; Sherman, forthcoming). Isuggest that at Harbin No. X, we find the rise of what can be character-ized more specifically as what I term ‘distinction work’. Distinction workis interactive service work (Leidner, 1993, 1996) that produces and recog-nizes social distinctions. Here I borrow the idea Bourdieu developed inDistinction(1984) that the production and consumption of cultural goods– in this case, the ‘good’ of customer service – involves a struggle oversymbolic categories that enables social groups to define and assert them-selves through simultaneously hierarchical and relational differences(Bourdieu, 1984, 1998). Distinction work is fundamentally about socialrelations – among managers, workers, and customers, and even relationsamongworkplaces, in that work activities communicate a relationship toother workplaces and the people found there. Service work organized asdistinction work seeks to attract customers and win their loyalty by distin-guishing a store and its clientele from settings located elsewhere – usuallylower down – in the social hierarchy.Under China’s socialist planned economy, service sector work (andretail work more specifically) wasnotdistinction work: customers had fewchoices and state retailers enjoyed a monopolistic stranglehold on the saleof consumer goods. Customer patronage was a non-issue, and in fact theservice work performed inside settings like department stores wasconducted in ways far more similar to industrial work than it is today.However, with the rise of a market economy and new social relations,retailers compete in an increasingly stratified field of competition. In thiscontext, the state-sector retail workers I studied mobilized a set of distinc-tions meant to stake out the store’s rightful place within a reconfiguredenvironment.But sales clerk counter strategies also engaged in a form of postsocialistnostalgia that only took on meaning in the context of a downward slide