III. Theoretical Framework

With focus on Asian societies, Ling suggests that the principal values of the Confucian system added to the growth of Asian fashion industry success.61 The

“importance of harmonious human relationships, social structure and work ethics” center

around the treatment of people, thereby relaying the value of amicable relationships and close ties as a way of providing foundations for community building.62 Exchanges

between designers and sewers, customers and sellers can build beyond this relationship

and become “like a family,” “performing a relationship of kin” that is intimate and tight knit.63 Moon adds that kin networks allow for “informal contracts built on mutual trust,” which makes it more flexible for professional disputes to be settled.64

Shared cultural heritage and past personal histories becomes a bonding factor for

communities, where connections can be easily made and core values of cultural heritage

are passed down and included within the fashion sphere. The Chinese businesses are thus

built around familial concepts, whether locations are abroad in Italy or within the garment

district of New York. The practice of gifting within Chinese immigrant workers and

designers, as Tu highlights in “All in the Family, Kin, Gifts and the Networks of

Fashion,” is significant beyond the use value and beyond the economic value, as it is a symbolic meaning.65 The familial narrative allows them to do this, forming a thick

solidarity despite being unrelated–their shared heritage or language allows them to feel

comfortable and familiar, formulating a bond that is like a family. This structure can also

be described as guanxi, a largely kin-based cultural metaphor for “shoring up social

61 Ling, Fashion in Multiple Chinas, 127. 62 Ling, Fashion in Multiple Chinas, 127. 63 Tu, The Beautiful Generation: Asian Americans and the Cultural Economy of Fashion, 65. 64 Moon, Critical Sociology, 525. 65 Tu, The Beautiful Generation: Asian Americans and the Cultural Economy of Fashion, 93.

relationships” and personal connections.66 With origins in Confucian times, the historical

shifts of guanxi has caused it to become diverse and varied, a flexible tool that allowed

people to create trustworthy, expansive business networks without contracts and legal guarantees.67 These personal connections operate on a chain of familiarity where one can

expand their network but also retain a familial structure through a network of support.

This could be comparable to building a community in which mutual aid is encouraged

and given, and therefore reciprocity naturally forms. Even amongst immigrants, some

traditions still linger among most Chinese despite a shift in the traditional Chinese family system–“all seem to value personalism and familism.”68 Much like guanxi, they want to

incorporate their friends into their kinship network and enlarge personal and kinship

connections, seeking community.

Theoretical Framework

The key theoretical frameworks of this thesis will be based on Benedict

Anderson’s imagined communities, Pierre Bourdieu’s habitus and Stuart Hall’s work on

representation. Anderson’s theory on imagined communities grounds itself in the idea

that nations are socially constructed, thereby labeling a nation as “an imagined political community.”69 A nation is imagined because “the members of even the smallest nation

will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.”70 Closely tied to nationalism,

66 Krause, Tight Knit: Global Families and the Social Life of Fast Fashion, 112. 67 Krause, Tight Knit: Global Families and the Social Life of Fast Fashion, 112. 68 Wong, Bernard. “Fashion, Kinship, and the Ethnic Identity of Chinese in New York City, with Comparative Remarks on the Chinese in Lima, Peru, and Manila, Philippines.” Journal of Comparative Family Studies. University of Toronto Press, 1985, 252. 69 Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. New York: 1991, 6. 70 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 6.

community is thus formed through common interests and shared foundation beliefs,

formulating a “deep, horizontal comradeship” with “profound emotional legitimacy” that stays rooted in each member of the community.71 An imagined community implies that there is a way to build and create.72 Brands are able to build communities much like

nations by establishing foundational connections with their customers. For Chinese

designers, whose works are frequently tied to their cultural heritage or values, they rather

incorporate their heritage through their lived experiences into the designs and

communities they want to build. By embodying their personal lived experiences, they

organically connect with a customer base that seeks like-minded brands to support.

Through social media and other forms of digital community, fashion brands are able to

build their communities through various outlets that could include or exclude physical

stores. Community is no longer tied to location, and a digitized space becomes a way for

those who are far in distance to connect with one another. Importantly, “communities are

to be distinguished, not by falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined.”73 As the two brands analyzed both began on the digital platform, it is crucial

to apply imagined communities to the digital world. By grounding this thesis in

Anderson’s theory, I argue that emerging Chinese designers formulate their own

imagined communities through construction of social media, design, and other forms of

marketing and communication tools that aid in building brand community.

Bourdieu’s habitus, referring to the way individuals perceive and react to the

social world around them, represents the way cultural and personal history shape each

71 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 4. 72 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 7. 73 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 6.

individual’s identity and actions. It is what one has acquired but “has become durably incorporated in the body in the form of permanent dispositions.”74 As habitus refers to

socialized norms or tendencies that guide individual behavior or thinking, communities

arise out of similar groupings of these views, and minorities who exist in a dominant

hegemonic culture then seek like minded individuals or groups, or adjust according to

these dominant structures, emphasizing a need for communities like such to exist. Maton

explains, “Habitus captures how we carry within us our history, how we bring this history

into our present circumstances, and how we then make choices to act in certain ways and not others.”75 Habitus can be seen as a routine of cultural habits embodied in everyday

life as related to time and place, linking “past, present and future, but also between the social and the individual, the objective and the subjective, the structure and agency.”76 As

habitus is not fixed or permanent, and can be changed under unexpected situations or

over a long historical period, emerging designers are constantly negotiating their identities within the Western world, both as individuals and as a brand community.77

Their position within the Westernized fashion sphere also affects their identity and

habitus, sharpening their need for a clearer brand identity to reach their community. The

notion of community as a foundation value in Chinese culture thus translates from

generation to generation. Linking the social life of a community to the individual, habitus

points to how one’s particular habitus and life contents can be shared with others of the same social class, gender, ethnicity, and so on, further building community and kinship.78

74 Bourdieu, Pierre. Sociology in Question, (Theory, Culture & Society), Vol. 18. Sage Publications: 1993, 55. 75 Maton, Karl. “Habitus.” Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts. Acumen: 2012, 51. 76 Maton, 2012, 52. 77 Navarro, Z. “In Search of Cultural Interpretation of Power.” IDS Bulletin 37(6), 2006, 11-22. 78 Maton, 2012, 52.