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The Dual Consequences of Cultural Localization: How Exposed Short
Stockings Subvert and Sustain Global Cultural Hierarchy
Matthew Chew
The clothes worn by contemporary urban Chinese should not appear unfa-
miliar at first glance. Suits, jeans, polo shirts, short skirts, and other items
that were rarities in China twenty years ago have now turned into staples
of many urbanites’ wardrobes. Moreover, in contrast to contemporary India
and Japan, traditionalistic types of dress are seldom worn in everyday life.
Nonetheless, closer examination reveals dramatic local mutations of Western
dress and styles. This essay focuses on one of the most widely adopted of these
sartorial localizations: exposed short stockings. By contemporary Western
conventions, women’s hosiery should be long enough to have the first several
inches of the top of the stocking covered from view by pants or skirt—the
shorter the hemline, the longer the hosiery ought to be. In contrast, many
Chinese women wear stockings exposing the entire top beneath a skirt’s hem-
line. This practice could be seen by non-Chinese observers as a deviant way
to wear stockings that evokes images of untidiness, eroticism, and indecency.
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Figure 1 Exposed short stockings on a young woman in a shop-
ping mall in Beijing, August 2001
Local cultural practices such as exposed short stockings are exciting to cul-
tural critics because of their subversive potential. They challenge the status
quo of global culture through deviation from the existing global grammar of
a cultural genre. Exposed short stockings transgress the boundary between
outerwear and underwear, violating current conventions of decent dressing
by displaying a part of dress that is deemed necessary to be kept hidden
from public view. The practice represents an act of cultural localization that
resists, counteracts, or even neutralizes Western cultural dominance and
global homogenization. At least, this is what current theories of cultural
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localization would claim. This essay examines in detail the case of exposed
short stockings in order to see whether these claims about cultural localiza-
tion are sustainable.
Similar to other instances of popular material culture in contemporary
China, the distinctive Chinese way of wearing short stockings has not re-
ceived serious attention or documentation. Most of my information on the
topic was obtained from ethnographic fieldwork in China between May
2000 and August 2002, when I was collecting data for a project (of which
this study is part) on the social implications of contemporary Chinese fashion
practices. Through participant observation in fashion-conscious crowds and
fieldwork at sites such as boutiques, main streets, busy shopping malls, and
dance clubs, I examined the present state of the practice. But it is through
in-depth ethnographic interviews and conversations with about a hundred
women that I obtained elaborate details on the historical background and
social meanings of exposed short stockings.
I conducted my fieldwork in several urban centers that represent different
fashion cultures. I spent about a year in Shanghai and its neighboring cities
Hangzhou and Nanjing, four months in Beijing and Tianjin, three months
in Wuhan and Zhengzhou, and a month in Chengdu and Chongqing. I
also conducted fieldwork in Hong Kong, Dongguan, and Guangzhou be-
tween trips. The geographic coverage is relevant for this essay because these
cities represent different degrees of influence by global Western fashion and
demonstrate different degrees and kinds of fashion localization. My ethno-
graphic interviews were targeted at women interested in fashion, although
I also interviewed some women not interested in fashion for comparative
purposes. Most of the interviewees fall within the age range of sixteen and
thirty-two, but I managed to interview several women over forty-five. Since
information from older women is especially needed for reconstructing the
history of exposed short stockings, I talked to an additional number of older
women specifically for this topic.
Story of Exposed Short Stockings, 1980 –1998
The late 1970s in China incubated significant transformations of dressing
practices. In the early 1970s, stockings were still unavailable to the urban
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masses and hence not included as a meaningful part of their fashion reper-
toire. With the relaxation of economic and cultural policies in the second half
of the 1970s, stockings became more available and entered everyday fashion
consciousness. The change was by no means immediate; my middle-aged
interviewees testified that it was still rare to see people in nylon stockings
in the late 1970s. It was in the early 1980s that the wearing of exposed short
stockings began to become visible.
Accounts of the Emergence of Exposed Short Stockings
I identify five kinds of accounts given by Chinese women to explain the
emergence and subsequent popularity of exposed short stockings. These ac-
counts are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and some are complementary.
The most frequently related account, and one that is also often made in
conjunction with the other four, is that the practice arose out of the relative
availability and affordability of short stockings in comparison with longer
hosiery. In the late 1980s, a pair of average panty hose still sold for more than
ten yuan, whereas a pair of short stockings cost approximately one yuan
in Shanghai. This steep price differential was very significant considering
the low per capita income in China. The differential was partially due to
the fact that domestic manufacturers supplied only short stockings, while
longer hosiery had to be imported. Moreover, even if one could afford them,
imported goods could not be easily acquired in the 1980s except in the large
metropolises.1
That short stockings were cheaper and more accessible than longer hosiery
did not mean that women had to endorse short stockings; there was an-
other choice in the market. Chinese women throughout the 1970s had been
wearing a type of crossover between socks and stockings made of artificial
fiber, sometimes referred to as kapulong siwa. In comparison with the ny-
lon stockings later introduced, the crossover was thicker, more opaque, less
breathable, and much less elastic. They were usually white or black but not
skin-colored as stockings are, and some were woven with patterns. Although
crossover stockings were more affordable than nylon stockings, in the 1980s
women switched to nylon stockings for a variety of reasons.
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Figure 2 Crossover nylon socks/stockings, plain short stockings, and a lace-adorned version of
short stockings
The most important of these reasons is given by the second account: com-
fort and hygiene. Most interviewees claim that hosiery minimizes the friction
between the shoes and the bare feet and prevents the uneasy feeling of having
their sweating feet sticking against the shoes. Crossover stockings fulfilled
these two functions, but they lacked thinness, elasticity, and breathability
relative to nylon stockings. For this reason, interviewees considered nylon
hosiery a better choice for comfort and hygiene. When one considers only
these functional reasons for wearing hosiery, short stockings are undoubt-
edly preferable to long ones. Most interviewees think it is unpleasant to wear
long stockings in hot weather and that short ones fulfill comfort and aes-
thetic functions as adequately as longer ones. Only when warmth becomes
relevant in colder seasons is long hosiery more desirable. But even in that
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case, the higher cost of long hosiery is a negative factor. The short stockings’
lack of warmth may be easily compensated for by wearing warmer pants or
longer dresses.
The third account attributes the cause of wearing exposed short stock-
ings to dressing habits. Only a few interviewees gave such an account, but I
nonetheless find it relevant to many women through my observations. The
major reason that few gave this account could be that dressing habits are,
by definition, something to which people adhere unconsciously. Crossover
stockings from the 1970s were similar to hosiery in their semitransparency
but were considerably different from hosiery in color, length, and woven
patterns. They did not evoke the decadent, sensual, bourgeois, and antirev-
olutionary images that hosiery in the early 1970s represented. When hosiery
was commercially introduced in the early 1980s, both manufacturers and
consumers readily preferred hosiery that approximated the length of the old
crossover stockings because it seemed more “normal” and nonprovocative.
Notice that this preference is more sociocultural than political or ideologi-
cal. Perhaps some women consciously avoid long hosiery for its ideological
dangers, but would it be even safer to avoid all forms of hosiery? For the
fashion-averse and fashion-indifferent majority, adopting hosiery and re-
placing plain long pants with skirts were two uncoordinated processes. Long
hosiery simply did not enter their repertoire of clothing choice; long hosiery
was not being considered and then ruled out for ideological reasons.
As the decade wore on and as views of dressing became liberalized, long
hosiery gradually entered women’s consumption consciousness, but by then
many were already accustomed to wearing short stockings and understood
them as the normal form of hosiery. Only fashion-aesthetic considerations
would motivate women to spend extra money on another set of hosiery. I
observed that some women would wear short stockings with and over their
longer hosiery. I was able to talk to one such woman in Beijing. She explained
that the weather was turning cold, and she was also so accustomed to wearing
short stockings that it felt weird when she did not have them on. This shows
how much the short stockings have become an indispensable and normal
part of Chinese women’s outfits.
In the 1980s, a part of the urban Chinese public adopted the perception that
stockings represented formality and propriety, whereas the lack of stockings
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produced a casual or improper image. The fourth account begins from this
perception, which was nurtured by two sources. As globalization proceeded,
the Chinese public gradually learned the conventional symbolic meanings
that Westerners attach to stockings and socks. At the same time, Chinese
also developed a local symbolic contrast between erotic bare feet and decent
stocking-covered ones. It is interesting to see how this positive perception
of stockings diametrically contradicts the negative one in circulation before
the 1980s. A Shanghainese woman in her late forties queries, “Why is it
improper if we don’t wear stockings? This is such a fengjian [feudalistic and
anachronistic] kind of thinking. When I was young, nobody wore hosiery
or thought so highly of it.”2Another Shanghainese woman reported that in
her high school in the late 1980s, those who wore exposed short stockings
were sedate, nonfashionable students.
Hosiery gradually became a part of the business attire of women, and it
was not strictly limited to foreign investment business circles. I observed
that the waitresses in larger restaurants usually wear short stockings. The
manager of a noodle shop told me that she asked waitresses to do so. One
of her objectives was to create for the restaurant a more modern and formal
business image in order to distinguish it from traditional neighborhood
noodle shops. The irony is that even though Chinese urbanites accurately
adopted a part of the Western conventions of hosiery symbolism, they did
not notice that according to the same conventions, any amount of formality
and propriety that the hosiery summoned would be destroyed by exposing
the top of the stockings. Women who wear exposed short stockings because
of perceptions of formality and propriety often are not conscious of these
niceties of dress conventions. They are not keen about fashion; they are only
trying to dress in a socially acceptable way.
Aside from decadence and formality, elegance was also one of hosiery’s
multivalent meanings in the 1980s. The fifth account explains that Chi-
nese women adopted short stockings for a particular fashion-aesthetic value:
classy elegance. Maggie, a fashion-conscious Shanghainese woman in her
late twenties, argues that “the exposed short stockings had never created a
fad or became a ‘must-have’ item for fashionable women. Trendy women
neither endorsed nor rejected hosiery, though they tended not to wear it.
It was those who pursued an elegant, classy, yet nontrendy and nonchic
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type of look who consistently wore hosiery.” Based on conversations with
other women less fashionable and from less globalized cities of China, I
do not think that Maggie’s view is entirely representative. Exposed short
stockings have indeed become a fashionable item for at least some Chi-
nese women. Nonetheless, we know from Maggie’s argument that hosiery
sometimes gives its wearer an elegant image and that some trendy women
avoid hosiery to differentiate themselves from the elegance-seeking crowd
in symbolic contrast. These symbolic conventions should be familiar to the
Western observer. The unfamiliar part is again a nonchalant attitude toward
exposing the top of the hosiery. The exposure would have generated an im-
age of explicit sexiness or sensuality by Western conventions, a perception
that threatens to dissolve the elegant image the wearer originally set out to
achieve.
The number of Chinese women who adopted exposed short stockings for
reasons described in the fifth account likely is smaller than that of the four
other accounts. However, the fifth account is most interesting in that the
internal symbolic contradiction it embodies is most socially consequential;
it possesses the highest potential to invite scorn and contempt. Women who
wear exposed short stockings for value, comfort, habit, or formality are partly
immune to critiques made from an aesthetic perspective. To the extent that
they self-consciously pursue nonaesthetic goals, they are not likely to feel
either shameful or enlightened when someone reveals to them the provincial
character of their practice. Pursuers of fashionability who wear exposed short
stockings, however, are more likely to feel either shameful or enlightened
because and to the extent that they see themselves as members of the global
community of fashionable people. This also explains why scorn for exposed
short stockings usually comes with the assumption that Chinese women
adopted the local practice for aesthetic reasons, and why fashionable people
such as Maggie stress to a foreign observer that trendy Chinese women never
loved exposed short stockings.
Discursive Context of the Exposed Short Stockings
For our purpose of investigating the subversive qualities of a cultural lo-
calization practice, it is crucial to analyze the evaluative discourse around
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it. The total number of Chinese women wearing exposed short stockings
probably increased in the 1990s. Various nondiscursive factors, such as the
improvement of living standards, encouraged nonurbanites who could not
afford hosiery in the 1980s to wear it. At the same time, a discourse that
negatively evaluated the practice appeared, arousing awareness among the
younger fashion-conscious urbanites that the practice is neither a conven-
tionally correct nor recommendable way of wearing hosiery.
Exposed short stockings are still ubiquitous in China, seen not only in
Shanghai and the coastal cities but also in hinterland cities, smaller towns,
and the countryside. It is difficult to determine whether the practice of wear-
ing exposed short stockings was invented in the coastal metropolises and then
spread to the rest of China or if it arose independently in individual localities
under nationally similar material cultural changes. It is instructive, how-
ever, to understand the geographic background in which the denigration of
exposed short stockings developed in the 1990s.
A negative discourse first developed in Hong Kong. For mainland Chi-
nese, Hong Kong in the last two decades of the twentieth century occupied a
very authoritative position on popular culture. Hong Kongers were looked
up to as role models in regard to consumption and lifestyle, and Hong Kong
culture was effectively diffused throughout China through gossip maga-
zines, popular music, television, and film. Hong Kong’s influence weakened
after the mid-1990s as the popular culture of Taiwan, Korea, and Chinese
coastal metropolises vied for attention and as Chinese gained easier access to
Western and Japanese popular culture. But it is merely a weakening relative
to earlier periods. For instance, one of the most established portals in China,
china.com, has a well-attended forum on Hong Kong culture and none on
Taiwan, Japan, Korea, or the United States.
The Hong Kong discourse on exposed short stockings was harsh, sarcastic,
and contemptuous. Individuals in Hong Kong noticed the habit as early
as the beginning of the 1980s, almost exactly when the practice emerged
in Shanghai and other coastal metropolises. A middle-aged Hong Kong
woman recollects how she was flabbergasted the first time she saw it in the
summer of 1983 on young mainland Chinese tourists. “Those short stockings
looked so weird. How did they manage to invent such a style? They could not
afford long hosiery? Their brightly colored outfits and tour to Hong Kong
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must have cost a small fortune. It must be because mainland Chinese women
deliberately preferred short stockings because it was fashionable for them.”
Although we have seen how some interviewees insist that exposed short
stockings had never become a fashion fad in Shanghai, this claim is easily
missed or dismissed by the casual Hong Kong observer. As explained earlier,
imputing an aesthetic reason to the adoption of local practices helps to justify
contempt. It is tempting for Hong Kongers to draw an insidious comparison
between refined, knowledgeable, and cosmopolitan Hong Kongers, on one
side, and vain, ignorant, and provincial mainlanders, on the other. Such a
comparison contains moral as well as aesthetic overtones.
In the latter half of the 1980s, the Hong Kong public recognized ex-
posed short stockings as one of the identifying marks of mainland Chinese
women. The shock value was gone, since most Hong Kongers had seen it
or heard about it through the media or friends. The local sartorial practice
became an ingredient of “ethnic” jokes that caricatured mainland Chinese.
When I asked Hong Kongers to describe how they felt about exposed short
stockings, most of them grinned and said something negative about them.
Perhaps they smiled because they shared a common Hong Kongers’ outrage
at the alien Chinese practice. Or maybe they smiled because my mention-
ing of the practice evoked memories of the media poking fun at it. Two of
them mentioned Jiang Xinyan, a young woman comedian in the late 1980s
who vividly impersonated mainland Chinese girls in local styles including
exposed short stockings. Television programs, films, and gossipy magazines
also widely circulated such images. For example, the critically acclaimed
Biaojie, Nihaoye series of films comically poked fun at Hong Kongers’ cul-
tural superiority over mainland Chinese, but the protagonist still had to be
stereotypically outfitted with exposed short stockings. Given Hong Kong’s
popular cultural authority, its discourse on exposed short stockings slowly
influenced young Chinese urbanites’ opinion on the local practice.
When the Hong Kong discourse spread to the mainland, it arrived first
in Guangdong province and Shanghai. Guangdong picked it up with more
ease than the rest of China because of its proximity to Hong Kong, use of the
same dialect, and better access to Hong Kong television and radio. Young
Guangzhou inhabitants born around 1980 told me that they were not old
enough to witness local youths wearing exposed short stockings. They had
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seen them only on people from the provinces. A Shanghainese woman who
avidly monitored Hong Kong popular culture recalls that she realized in
1989 that people outside China never wore exposed short stockings, and she
came to consider them unappealing. She learned this negative assessment
through the jokes and sarcasm directed at exposed short stockings in gossipy
magazines such as the Mingbao Weekly. Aside from the Hong Kong media,
mainland Chinese also learned about the discourse through personal contact
with Hong Kongers. Hong Kong men would be ashamed if their mainland
Chinese wives or girlfriends accompanied them in public wearing exposed
short stockings. Because the Hong Kong discourse had so successfully stig-
matized short stockings, some Hong Kongers would even take issue with
short stockings covered by long pants. I witnessed in nightclubs how Hong
Kong men poked fun at the short stockings worn by hostesses even though
they were well covered by long pants.
Institutions partly carried out and reinforced the spread of the Hong Kong
discourse to China. A Shanghai-based Hong Konger who heads the Chinese
branch of an American company claims, “If I see my subordinates in exposed
short stockings, I will make sure they never wear them again at work. The
formal reason is that they hurt the company image. But even putting the
company image aside, I would still prohibit them because they’re simply dis-
gusting!” His views and actions are by no means atypical. Other Hong Kong
friends who hold top managerial positions in mainland China responded
with similar thoughts when I brought up the topic. One of them informed
me that middle-level managers, who are themselves local Chinese in most
cases, would often train lower-level office workers in dress manners, and
exposed short stockings were on the list of prohibitions. Another institution
that enforces the discourse is the hostess nightclub. A hostess manager of a
Shanghai nightclub told me that newly arrived girls from the provinces and
countryside sometimes wear exposed short stockings to work, and she has
to convince them that the practice is bad for them as well as the club. She
admits that not every manager will attend to this particular sartorial detail,
but those that cater mainly to Hong Kong and Taiwanese clients surely agree
with her. A fashionable Hong Kong man finds exposed short stockings and
other sartorial localizations such as platform sneakers absolutely unbearable
and claims that he has rejected otherwise gorgeous hostesses because of them.
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Fashion-conscious Guangzhouers and Shanghainese were generally aware
of the Hong Kong discourse by the early 1990s, and they gradually internal-
ized it during the decade. Now one rarely sees younger Guangzhouers and
Shanghainese in exposed short stockings. A woman in her forties complained
that her daughter, who has a steady Hong Kong boyfriend, chides her for
wearing stockings incorrectly: “No Hong Kongers would ever wear them
this way!” Similar to Hong Kongers, she is using the exposed short stock-
ings symbolically to reinforce the distinction between her own metropolitan
self and the ignorant provincial other. This phenomenon is similarly pro-
nounced in Guangdong province. In the intensely industrialized Dongguan
area, for instance, a sizable part of the population comes from Hunan and
other poorer hinterland provinces to work in factories. I talked to Dongguan
locals on several occasions in dance clubs. Most of them expressed disdain
for the wardrobes of women clubbers from the provinces, including exposed
short stockings, platform shoes, and clothes made of very poor materials.
Not everyone’s negative evaluation of exposed short stockings is culti-
vated by the Hong Kong discourse; it could instead be reached through
mainlanders’ direct internalization of Western conventions. Although Bei-
jing is neither culturally close to Hong Kong nor a particularly fashionable
city, its inhabitants learned about the normative way of wearing hosiery.
All of the fashion-conscious youthful Beijingers I talked to were aware that
the exposed short stockings style did not accord with conventions. Similar
to youthful Shanghai and Guangzhou locals, Beijingers educate and deride
outsiders who subscribe to the style. A young woman from Jinan, Shandong
came to live in Beijing in 2000 and was converted in this way.
I went shopping at this unremarkable shoe store. It was neither a high-
fashion nor a very expensive store....When I tried on a pair of shoes,
the salesperson stared at my feet and said, “Oh, you must be from the
provinces.” I said no and she said, “But you’re wearing these stockings.”
Then I realized that somehow my way of wearing stockings wasn’t right.
After the incident, I asked my Beijing girlfriends and they informed me
of the details....Inever wore them again.
There is undoubtedly resistance to the Hong Kong discourse. But it is dif-
ficult to argue that the resistance is very powerful even though the negative
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discourse did not penetrate much beyond Guangdong and the coastal cities.
That the discourse did not travel into the hinterland regions could be an indi-
cation of the uneven reach of cultural globalization rather than the strength
of local culture to resist globalization. I spotted exposed short stockings on
many women of different ages in Wuhan, Jinan, and Zhengzhou. Although
these cities are somewhat outward oriented and the capitals of relatively
prosperous provinces, their publics are apparently not aware of the nega-
tive discourse on exposed short stockings. I informed several young women
in Wuhan about the Hong Kong discourse, and their reactions were di-
vided. Some immediately embraced the derogatory discourse and claimed
they had always thought the exposed short stockings were uncool, whereas
others tried to resist the derogatory discourse. A typical response was that
while people in the West, Hong Kong, and Shanghai are entitled to their
own fashion conventions and opinions, so too are they in Wuhan. They also
argued that the West was so far away that its conventions and opinions do
not and ought not matter in Wuhan.
The case of a particularly eloquent supporter of the local style gives us a
clue to the instability of local cultural resistance regarding the exposed short
stockings. Lili was born in Wuhan in 1979 and has traveled to Guangzhou.
When I met her in Wuhan in July 2000, she was wearing a unique-looking
pair of exposed short stockings with butterfly embroidery. I told her about
the negative evaluation of the local style. She dismissed it in this way: “Ad-
mittedly, exposed short stockings look uninspiring on most wearers, but they
shine on those with adroit mix-and-match skills and sound fashion sense. I
look OK, don’t I?...Isn’t this fashion commonsense and applicable to any
fashion item? Why make a fuss about the exposed short stockings style?”
If all wearers of exposed short stockings reasoned in this way, a discourse
counter to the negative one would have emerged. Lili’s is the most intelligent
and theoretically compelling defense of the exposed short stockings that I
heard.
To our chagrin, Lili soon deserted the critical cause. When I visited Wuhan
again in September 2001, she told me that she finds exposed short stockings
very provincial and no longer wears them. I asked her several times dur-
ing the subsequent few days why her position switched so abruptly and
radically. She answered indifferently: “Nothing particular happened. I just
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didn’t know enough then and yet I do now. They look stupid to me now.
Stockings are not meant to be worn that way....I’ll also let my friends know
when I see them in exposed short stockings.” Perhaps it is only logical for
an intelligent and self-conscious wearer of exposed stockings to switch to
the global side. The local style is not supported by any tradition, convention,
discourse, or institution. It is subscribed to mainly by fashion-indifferent
and fashion-unconscious people, older generations, and hinterland inhabi-
tants and is aesthetically appreciated by no one except perhaps critics. Why
would Lili choose not to side instead with youth, fashion-conscious peo-
ple, metropolitans, global media and the fashion industry, globally respected
fashion standards, and powerful global discourses?
The direction of resistance put up by older women is often opposite that
of young women. Young women appeal to aesthetic democracy or principles
of fashion, but older women try instead tactically to exempt themselves
from aesthetic judgement. To do this, they emphasize that their wearing of
exposed short stockings is motivated not in the least by fashion but instead
by comfort and practicality. As our previous accounts have shown, comfort
and practicality were major motivations that brought about the popularity of
the practice. Other imaginative nonaesthetic reasons have been invented in
reaction to the Hong Kong discourse. For example, a middle-aged Beijinger
who now lives in Shanghai laments that young girls in the two cities trade
health for fashion. Her theory is that “short stockings help to protect the
feet from ultraviolet lights and lessen sweating.” Older women’s tactical
avoidance of aesthetic judgment does not always work, however, because
short stockings could be quite conspicuous even when seen on them, giving
people a reason to suspect that they partly are wearing them for fashion
value.
Subverting or Sustaining Global Homogenization?
In the current discussion of globalization, theorists often refer to the sub-
versive power of cultural localization in non-Western places. They argue
against bleak conceptions of globalization as global homogenization or cul-
tural imperialism.3Instead, they portray cultural localization as something
that resists, refracts, or even neutralizes the global diffusion of cultural prac-
tices and influences originating from the West.
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One of the earliest to advocate this understanding of cultural localization
is Ulf Hannerz, who argues that the local appropriates the global rather
than the other way around.4Most of the leading sociologists of globalization
adopted similar understandings in the 1990s. Roland Robertson employs the
notion glocalization to emphasize how the local determines cultural global-
ization processes as much as the global does.5Mike Featherstone coined the
term third cultures to describe how localization processes transform global
cultural influences and indigenous traditions to generate entirely new cul-
tural practices.6Martin Albrow contends that the main dynamic of cultural
globalization is “the multiplication and diversification of worlds rather than
homogenization.”7The theorist who most insistently argues that localiza-
tion subverts globalization is John Tomlinson. In a series of articles, he
refutes the notion of cultural imperialism and global homogenization by
showing how the local resists global cultural influences in myriad ways.8
Leading social theorists, including Anthony Giddens, also subscribe to the
picture of cultural globalization proposed by sociologists of globalization.9
A similar understanding of cultural localization developed simultaneously
in communication studies. Eilhu Katz and Tamar Liebes’s influential study
illustrates that even when non-Western audiences are consuming Western
cultural products, they attach very localized interpretations and meanings to
the product.10 Studies of cultural localization constitute a subfield in anthro-
pology, and the localization argument is so ingrained there that arguments
of cultural imperialism are often objected to on the grounds that critics have
not seriously searched for locally invented, nuanced cultural differences.11
Our story of exposed short stockings does not entirely corroborate this
current understanding of cultural localization, however. We saw how the
localization practice became popular, struggled with a globalizing discourse,
and then gradually receded from highly globalized to less globalized local-
ities. The practice is indeed embraced by a large number of people, and
it undoubtedly transgresses mainstream Western conventions of dress and
taste. But at the same time, it is obvious from the success of the derogatory
discourse that cultural globalization is by no means halted by it. Are we
witnessing the strengthening or neutralization of cultural globalization by
the local in the case of exposed short stockings?
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That localization does not and will not completely neutralize globalization
is perhaps rather obvious to postcolonial critics who are sensitive to the cul-
tural power differential between the (post)colonizer and the (post)colonized.
Critics of localization theories have also provided case studies to illustrate
the limited subversive power of localization.12 What is new about the case
of exposed short stockings is that it does not merely show that cultural glob-
alization is alive and well but also documents how localization practices
could be turned into an instrument of or an intermediate step toward global
homogenization.
The transgression of Western symbolic codes by a localization practice is
often loosely taken by critics as sufficient evidence for the subversiveness of
the practice. However, cultural transgression may generate effects that rein-
force rather than weaken global Western cultural influence. In our story, the
localization practice became a symbol used by Hong Kongers and coastal
urban youths to distinguish between more-globalized and less-globalized
Chinese. The practice stigmatizes the less globalized for their provinciality
and becomes a foil to celebrate the cosmopolitanism of the more globalized.
That transgressions of socially sanctioned symbolic codes could become
markers for discrimination has long been understood by anthropologists
such as Mary Douglas and Fredrik Barth. What contemporary cultural so-
ciologists describe as symbolic boundary construction is also present in our
case.13 There is no reason for critics to ignore that exposed short stockings or
other localization practices will be readily used by social actors in that way.
The derogatory discourse problematized the local quality of exposed short
stockings and designated them a mark of Chinese who are less culturally
globalized than Hong Kongers. Through increasing interaction with Hong
Kongers in the 1990s, people in the coastal cities who embraced the prac-
tice were punished or educated because of the local style’s negative symbolic
value. Institutions such as modern business firms and hostess nightclubs in
the coastal cities structurally enforced the symbolic code of the Hong Kong
discourse. Because the derogatory discourse legitimizes the global Western
conventions of wearing hosiery and dismisses local practice, it reinforces
global cultural hierarchy as well as intranational social hierarchy.
The popularity and proliferation of a localization practice are also some-
times taken as evidence for its subversiveness. A synchronic snapshot of
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the successful reception of a localization practice can be misleading, how-
ever. The diachronic details in our case indicate how a localization practice’s
temporary popularity could coexist with its simultaneous subjugation by
globalization. We have seen the clear correspondence between the diffusion
of the Hong Kong discourse and a geographical and social relocation of
the practice. Fashion-conscious people in the littoral cities and Guangzhou
province, being more receptive to global cultural influence than other sec-
tions of the Chinese population, are indeed found to have been the first to
internalize the negative evaluation of the practice embodied in the Hong
Kong discourse.
While the majority of the population in the People’s Republic of China
still remains unaffected by the Hong Kong discourse and Western conven-
tions of dress, there is reason to believe that it cannot stay unaffected forever.
Chinese women did not wear exposed short stockings in the late 1970s, but
they did not refuse to replace their locally invented crossover stockings with
a more globally recognized form in the 1980s. What allows us to presume
that they would refuse to replace the locally invented exposed short stockings
style by something more congruent with Western conventions? Moreover, in
mainland Chinese discourse on fashion, Hong Kong and Shanghai occupy
more authoritative positions than their own cities.14 If the fashion communi-
ties in Hong Kong and Shanghai judge exposed short stockings negatively,
how likely is it for consecutive generations of hinterland locals to stand firm
by their present positive judgment and resist the authority of Hong Kong,
Shanghai, and the West? Lili’s betrayal of the local style is not at all atypical
or difficult to understand.
Other clues for assessing the tenacity of a localization practice are pro-
vided by the motivations of the people for adopting it, which in our case
include frugality, comfort, inertia, formality, and elegance. The first four,
due to their nonaesthetic nature, tend to become less important for dress
as living standards improve in the less-globalized places in China. The last
motivation, representing partial adoption of Western fashion values, will
become less meaningful as more extensive knowledge of Western fashion
becomes available. From the above analysis, it seems more likely than not
that exposed short stockings will continue to recede from more-globalized
to less-globalized locales as occurred in the 1990s. This uninspiring scenario
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is of course exactly what modernization theory, global homogenization dis-
course, or neoliberal triumphalism have predicted.
But has my previous critique unfairly overlooked the more sophisti-
cated versions of theories of cultural localization? Tomlinson accedes that
global cultural “power geometries” remain despite localization’s subversive
effects.15 Despite this admission, it is difficult for current theories to inter-
pret the subversive power of localization practices as heavily dependent on
context. It is even more difficult for them to account for the fact that cultural
localization sometimes represents an intermediate step toward global cul-
tural homogenization, or that it maintains global cultural hierarchy through
constructing symbolic boundaries. One can contend that even though these
antisubversive functions of localization exist, cultural localization potentially
opens up subtle discursive space and initiates nuanced psychological changes
that subvert the global. But such qualifications already significantly dimin-
ish the practical relevance of the current triumphant evaluation of cultural
localization.
Take the example of cultural resistance demonstrated by older Shang-
hainese women and young Wuhanese women. It could be recognized as the
seeds of a local counterdiscourse subverting cultural globalization. But it is
no match against the derogatory discourse supported by the institutionalized
media and historically authoritative cultural power of Hong Kong. In the
less-globalized parts of China, exposed short stockings are associated less
with cultural fragmentation or local resistance than with modern civility
and Western fashion. In the more-globalized parts, they are usually used
in the contexts of stigmatizing, punishing, or educating the local. It would
not be an exaggeration to say that the sight of exposed short stockings does
not arouse a sense of cultural decentering in anybody other than critical cos-
mopolitan intellectuals. If we then argue that critical intervention may still
contribute indirectly to finding a way out, it only shows how misplaced our
current celebration of cultural localization is.
Other Sartorial and Cultural Localization Practices
How representative are exposed short stockings as a case of sartorial local-
ization in China or cultural localization in general? I can easily think of a
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dozen other sartorial localizations in contemporary China that resemble the
case of exposed short stockings. I will briefly discuss two of them to explore
their striking overall similarity to and instructive differences from exposed
short stockings. In these cases, we witness a similar temporary popularity
of the localization practices, followed by a global discourse that punishes or
educates supporters of the practices, and then a retreat of the practices to the
less-globalized parts of China.
An observant visitor to Chinese cities in the early 1990s would be as-
tounded by exposed short stockings on Chinese women as well as two other
localization practices in menswear: the retaining of brand-name labels on
the sleeves of jackets and on the limbs of sunglasses. The practices transgress
Western sartorial conventions by retaining and displaying what ought to
have been removed following the purchase. The transgression attracts at-
tention because it is carried out at conspicuous sites of an outfit. Labels at the
end of the jacket sleeve are often made in colors that poorly match the color
of the jacket. The tag on the sunglasses is even more noticeable because it
dangles almost exactly in front of the wearer’s eyes.
The two localization practices do not carry functional values such as
warmth, comfort, or economy; their popularity stems mainly from mis-
understanding Western conventions and their fashion value. Chinese men’s
confusion about when and where brand-name labels are to be retained
should be perfectly understandable. Contemporary Western conventions
regarding labels on dress are not as simple and predictable as we presume.
If people in the West flaunt brand-name logos on jeans, polo shirts, some
shirts and jackets, and even underwear, what is so egregious about labels
on the sleeves of a jacket? Chinese men generally do not have a chance to
learn about these intricate conventions, because retail store personnel, men’s
fashion magazines, and commercials remain undeveloped in the People’s
Republic. By the late 1980s many Chinese men had come to regard the two
local practices as normative. Domestic producers made a point of sewing
labels on the sleeves of all types of jackets, including casual boxy styles that
would not usually have labels attached in the West. An interesting detail is
that the labels on these domestic jackets often used neither Western phrases
nor Chinese monograms but pinyin romanization. Here the wearing of
brand-name labels represents urbaneness and affluence, and the wearing of
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Western alphabets on the body evokes images of trendiness and intellectu-
ality. Nonetheless, since the prime targets of domestic menswear are groups
with lower income and less cosmopolitan experience, pinyin romanization
performs the intended function and yet is less intimidating than Western
spellings.
When Hong Kongers discovered the practices in the late 1980s, they again
formulated an abusive discourse much like that surrounding exposed short
stockings, though it was not as widely circulated. Through everyday comic
discourse and the media, the localization practices became another active
ingredient for stereotyping mainland Chinese as silly, vain, and provincial.
For example, the very popular film God of Gamblers II features a comical
figure who leaves the tag on sunglasses. Contemporary Hong Kongers are
among the most avid worshipers of brand names in the world. Yet against
the foil of Chinese men’s uneducated and unresourceful brand-name vanity,
Hong Kongers’ brand-name worship turns into cosmopolitan sophistica-
tion. The lack of functional motivation for the two practices leaves them
especially vulnerable to critical responses. Similar to the case of exposed
short stockings, fashion pursuers tended to quickly abandon the practices
when it was revealed to them that for the globalized individual these lo-
cal inventions lacked aesthetic value. Moreover, older or fashion-indifferent
Chinese, as well as those inhabiting the hinterland or countryside, lacked
functional motivation to pick up the practices even if they still found them
aesthetically appealing. In 2000 I could not catch anyone in sunglasses with
tags in the coastal metropolises or large hinterland cities such as Wuhan
and Zhengzhou, though I still noticed some wearers keeping ultraviolet ray
protection certification labels on the sunglass lenses. I still see labels on jacket
sleeves worn by immigrant factory workers in Guangdong and tourists in
Shanghai from poorer provinces, but they seem to be considerably less com-
mon than a decade ago.
It is not particularly difficult to identify indigenous dressing practices or
fashion styles from non-Western cultures that are both locally and globally
recognized. The Indian sari, the Japanese kimono, and the Chinese qipao,
for example, are embraced by their respective local populations, including
the cosmopolitan, upper-class, and fashion-conscious sections. There are
no negative discourses in the contemporary world that pressure people to
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abandon these indigenous styles, or at least the negative voices are insignif-
icant in comparison with forces that support them. Even the Mao suit is
not usually treated with the kind of contempt accorded tags on sunglasses.
Against this background, the dismal fate of localizations of Western dress in
contemporary China seems puzzling.
One way to approach the puzzle is to recognize the difference between
indigenous styles that derive primarily from traditional dress and those
from the localization of Western dress. There are no essential qualities that
differentiate the two categories; both are hybrid, impure, and a mix of local
and (usually) Western elements. The difference to which I am referring
resides in the discursive and institutional implications of the two categories.
Originating mainly from traditional dress, the former category is less likely
to be dismissed as local distortion. Traditional dress in general may be in
danger of being supplanted by Western fashion, but particular elements
of traditional dress survive, mutate, or become hybridized, turning into
globally recognized and locally supported indigenous symbols, as discussed
by Henrietta Harrison in this issue. Localizations of Western dress, no matter
how popular they are at a specific moment and place, are less likely to receive
symbolic legitimation through this path. It is difficult to legitimize them
as a part of indigenous tradition unless they remain popular for a longer
time in history and hence become remembered as a part of the indigenous
tradition, usually conceived of as external to fashion aesthetics. Localizations
of Western dress rarely remain popular for a long time, however, because
locals tend to abandon them once they become more familiar with global
Western conventions of dress or when more authentic global Western styles
become affordable and available.
Since hybrid styles developed from indigenous traditional dress can be
more easily appropriated as representative of a culture, race, or nation, they
are more likely to receive backing from the state and national communities.16
For example, when the success of the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
called for a display of Chineseness at the 2001 Academy Awards, all three
female Chinese superstars outfitted themselves in qipaos.17 It is clear that
in such global contexts, localized styles such as exposed short stockings are
not able to offer comparably credible symbolic values of Chineseness and
indigeneity. People who accept the qipao represent a broad spectrum of class
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and status composition, whereas those who support exposed short stockings
or labels on jacket sleeves belong to classes with lower economic resources
and social prestige.
Story of the Exposed Short Stockings, 1999–2001
The story of exposed short stockings could well have ended in 1999 after go-
ing through the cycle of rise and decline in large coastal cities and eventual
retrenchment in the hinterland and countryside. However, a most improb-
able twist occurred: exposed short stockings became a street fad in Tokyo
in 1999 and found their way to catwalks in Paris and Milan in 2001. While
the Hong Kong discourse relegated exposed short stockings to the fashion
periphery within China, other forces propelled them into the global fashion
limelight.
It is difficult to trace whether the Chinese practice inspired the Japanese
style, since the fad originated in street style and not designer-centered high
fashion. But I believe the Japanese style developed independently. Japan-
ese housewives wear short or knee-high stockings beneath the hemline,
although the practice is less widespread than in China.18 The overall effect
is also different because the stockings are often matched with better-quality
shoes and dresses, and Japanese women tend to wear them only in the neig-
borhood or for relatively casual occasions. Moreover, different versions of
exposed short stockings have recurred in Japanese youth style. The most
influential one was in the early 1980s, when leg warmers and colorful knee-
high stockings became fashionable for several seasons.
The contemporary Japanese exposed short stockings are similar to the
Chinese version in terms of their exposure of the top of the stocking be-
low the hemline. They generate an identical symbolic sabotage of Western
conventions of dress—the exposing of underwear to public view—but they
also carry many significant differences. The Japanese versions are usually in
bright colors, giving the impression that the wearer is self-consciously play-
ing with the conventions of stockings. The vast majority of Chinese wear
skin-colored ones instead. In Japan the stockings could be seen between
1999 and 2001 on young women hanging out around the trendy Harajuku-
Aoyama area and in street-style magazines such as Spring,Fruit,orZipper.19
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The motivation to embrace the style was exclusively fashion oriented. Japan-
ese women would not usually continue to wear a pair of stockings when they
were worn out or partly torn. Older Chinese women who adopt short stock-
ings for their pragmatic value, however, often keep wearing them even
when they completely lose elasticity or are partly torn. Japanese consumers
of short stockings are also offered a formidable variety of lengths, print
patterns, opacity, and knitting styles unimaginable in China. For example,
Japanese youths turned to net-knit, thicker, and opaque fabrics in the winter
of 2000.
Despite the faddish quality of contemporary Japanese exposed short stock-
ings, there were elaborate mix-and-match rules associated with the style.
The common way to wear them in the summer of 2000 was to match pastel-
colored, midcalf-length stockings with slightly platformed wooden sandals.
Stockings that were opaque, patterned, fishnet knitted, or cuffed were usu-
ally seen with regular or strapless high heels. Variations occurred as the street
style evolved and spread, and no one could comprehensively spell out the
multiple and changing rules. But the fact that mix-and-match rules mat-
tered is by itself a significant difference from the Chinese case. Because the
exposed short stockings were not perceived as a style by Chinese women,
aesthetic rules for wearing them were neither developed nor important.
Chinese women wore exposed short stockings with black loafers at school
and with pumps in business settings. Fashion-indifferent youths wore them
with sneakers in casual settings, and older women wore them with all kinds
of casual shoes and sandals. These combinations are functional and practical,
not aesthetic. Only a minority of Chinese wearers, such as Lili of Wuhan,
paid attention to mixing and matching.
The fashion-indifferent section of the contemporary Japanese public is
unlikely to mistake the exposure of the top of the stockings as the normal
Western way of wearing stockings. Given the intellectuality of Japanese fash-
ion consumers and the meticulous fashion media, many Japanese endorsers
of exposed short stockings would probably know that such transgressions of
Western conventions had respectable precedents in contemporary Western
fashion history, an example of which is Jean-Paul Gaultier’s signature work
in 1991–1992 that included Madonna’s famous pointed bra. The knowl-
edgeability and intentionality of both the fashion consumers and the public
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audience create a sense of mimicry and play that starkly contrasts with the
impression of ignorance and local imitation in the Chinese case. Moreover,
many young Japanese women wore the stockings with a cute overall out-
fit. By neutralizing or reconfiguring the erotic meaning originally attached
to the act of exposing an underwear item, cuteness further foregrounds
the mimicry and ironic meanings of the practice.20 Not only did exposed
short stockings win popularity in Japanese streets, but they were presented
by the most prestigious Western fashion houses in their spring/summer
and fall/winter shows in 2001.21 This gave the practice wider exposure and
acceptance in the global fashion community, which in turn contributed,
no matter how weakly, to destablizing mainstream Western conventions
of wearing hosiery.22 These recent developments in global fashion centers
greatly complicate the meanings of exposed short stockings in the relatively
globalized parts of China. The public of these places internalized the deroga-
tory discourse throughout the 1990s. Yet in early 2001, Hong Kong’s widely
circulated East Touch magazine suddenly announced, “Nothing in life is
immutable: you usually associate the short stockings with the mainland Chi-
nese, [but]...they have become the latest must-have item offered by Prada,
Miu Miu, as well as Marc Jacobs!”23 The popular Guangzhou-based fashion
magazine Hope also carried a similar article around the same time: “The
matching of short stockings with sandals or high heels was recognized as
the most laotu [outdated and provincial] style. This season, they defy every-
one’s expectations and become the trendiest on the street....Looks terrible?
Cute? No matter how you see them, they remind you again of the absolute
rule in fashion: ‘What is trendy is beautiful.’”24
Hong Kong and the Chinese coastal metropolises remained largely un-
aware of or indifferent to the global success of exposed short stockings until
2001. This delay is revealing. Contemporary Hong Kong’s fashion media,
fashion merchandisers and retailers, and street-style subcultures monitor
Japanese fashion development with the utmost intensity. It would usually
take less than two months for a minor fad, such as the star prints in 2001, to
get noticed by Hong Kong’s observers, reported in the fashion media, man-
ufactured in Guangdong factories, and worn on the streets in Hong Kong.
After that, the fashion conscious in Shanghai and Guangdong would also
learn about the fad through Hong Kong’s gossipy magazines. In this context,
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the invisibility of the Japanese version of exposed short stockings in Hong
Kong in 2000 is glaring. The fashion media were silent about them, manu-
facturers and retailers did not invest in them, and no one on the streets wore
them. Among the fashion icons in Hong Kong, only the most maverick and
avant-garde, Faye Wong, ventured to adopt them in 2000. Yet the fashion
media neglected to comment on her stockings even though it commented
on her shoes. The silence likely resulted from unsureness about whether and
how to praise the stockings.25
Even after the media reported on the global embrace of exposed short
stockings, fashion consumers in globalized Chinese cities failed to pick up
the fad. Perhaps the style has been so stigmatized in the recent past that few
are confident enough to carry it off. The symbolic meanings of exposed short
stockings are destablized nonetheless. A Guangxi-born resident of Dong-
guan discovered the new ambivalent meanings of exposed short stockings in
the following way: “When an atypical, bright red, and knee-length pair of
exposed stockings caught my sight in Guangzhou, I presumed initially that
the woman wearing them was a laomui [an epithet for girls from outside the
Guangdong province]. Then I noticed that the woman’s companions dressed
outstandingly trendily and conversed in Japanese. After this incident, I am
less certain about using the exposed short stocking to judge strangers.”
What Does the Story of Stockings Tell Us about Cultural Globalization?
Part two of our story may have constituted a happy ending for exposed short
stockings, but what are its implications for cultural localization in general?
Circumstances in Japan have undoubtedly allowed exposed short stockings
to realize their cultural subversive potential. The style is as much a sartorial
localization in Japan as in China; neither of the two non-Western cultures
invented the hosiery or the currently globally recognized conventions for
wearing them. Do these facts after all reaffirm that localization practices are
necessarily, inherently, or automatically subversive? We have to admit that
the success of the practice in Japan indeed gives us some clues as to what sort
of conditions contribute to realizing the subversive potential of localization.
However, these clues direct our attention away from the macrobackground
of cultural localization and inherent properties of the local practices—two
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Figure 3 A pair of boots inspired by the exposed short stockings
style, Beijing, August 2001, seen on a tall girl with a stylish outfit.
It is difficult to judge whether they look trendy or provincial.
factors that currently preoccupy the attention of theorists of localization. The
opposite fates of the similar localization practices in Japan and China strongly
suggest that the cultural political implications of a localization practice are
overdetermined by a host of contextual factors external to the practice.
It is not difficult to sketch out the general factors that distinguish Japan
from China in regard to fashion authority. They include Tokyo’s established
position as one of the four or five global centers of fashion, the unparalleled
buying power and intellectual investment of Japanese fashion consumers,
the massive fashion media and marketing institutions in Japan, and the
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successful cultivation of a generation of globally prominent Japanese de-
signers in the 1980s. To go into the details of how these factors helped to
legitimize the exposed stockings style would require a separate essay. For
our present purposes, we simply need to understand that most of these
conditions of success are linked to institutions and power, and that these
conditions are much less available in China than in Japan with regard to
the cultural genre of fashion.26 Incidentally, they are also much less available
in many non-Western cultures than in China. Against this backdrop, the
localization practice’s successful subversion of the global in Japan only puts
into starker relief its unlikelihood of success in other non-Western localities.
Furthermore, notice that even Japan’s adoption of the practice was not itself
sufficient to reverse the symbolic meaning of the practice in Hong Kong and
China. The full reversal had to wait until Milan decided to legitimize the
practice, and street fads in Japan do not necessarily or usually translate into
favorable reception in Milan or Paris. That the localization practice cannot
realize its subversive potential unless Milan or Paris consents demonstrates
the extent to which Western fashion centers remain globally dominant.
What our story thus demonstrates is how indispensable institutions and
power are for a localization practice to subvert dominant global culture. Se-
rious quandaries immediately emerge when we attempt to bring institutions
and power into the discussion of cultural resistance. The implications of cul-
tivating (local) institutions and power to fight against (global) institutions
and power are dubious, and they can be observed through the case of Japan.
Unbridled consumerism, dominant capitalist production, and ubiquitous
marketing are some of the background factors that contributed to the suc-
cess of Japan’s exposed short stockings and the fashion authority of Japan in
the world. Institutions and power, which tend to reify and self-perpetuate,
directly contradict critics’ pursuit of an alternative third space, a space in
which genuinely postcolonial cultures hopefully grow.27
At the same time, focusing critical attention on contextual institutions and
power helps us avoid some of the problems of current theories. An uncon-
ditional celebration of cultural localization may be replaced by a more com-
plex, contingent, and nondeterministic evaluation of localization practices in
a case-by-case and diachronic way. This contingent and contextual character
is very salient in the case of exposed short stockings. The presence of Hong
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Kong, a highly Westernized yet linguistically Chinese discursive commu-
nity that intimately interacts with China, contributed greatly to rendering
the localization practice countersubversive. Without it, the micropolitics of
power would not have obtained a powerful channel and basis through which
it pressured provincial Chinese to self-criticize the localization practice. Al-
ternative bases such as Shanghai, Guangzhou, or Taipei may eventually
achieve an identical result. Or they may not—it is contingent upon how
attached Chinese consumers have grown to particular localization practices
when negative discursive knowledge/power emerges in China. Another in-
structive scenario is generated by imagining a much more evenly and fully
globalized cultural and fashion scene in contemporary China. In that case,
the cultural authority of Western conventions of dress would no longer need
to operate indirectly via Hong Kong or the coastal metropolises. Through
interaction with Western individuals and reception of the global fashion
media, Chinese consumers would internalize the “correct” way of wearing
stockings in the same way that children in the West do. Within this context,
whether or how much cultural localization subverts global homogenization
is more uncertain and complex than we currently assume.
Notes
1 The price differential between short and longer hosiery drastically narrowed in the 1990s as
domestic factories began to manufacture longer hosiery and as the price of short stockings
rose with inflation.
2 All citations from interviews and conversations are translated by myself into English from
Chinese (either Mandarin or the Cantonese dialect).
3 For arguments for cultural imperialism, see classics such as Herbert Schiller, Communication
and Cultural Domination (White Plains, N.Y.: International Science and Arts Press, 1976).
4 See Ulf Hannerz, “Notes on the Global Ecumene,” Public Culture 1, no.2 (spring 1989): 66–75.
5 Roland Robertson, “Glocalization: Time-Space and Homogenous-Heterogeneity,” in Global
Modernities, ed. Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash, and Roland Robertson (London: Sage, 1995),
37–40.
6 See Mike Featherstone, Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism, and Identity (London:
Sage, 1995).
7 See Martin Albrow, The Global Age: State and Society beyond Modernity (Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 1997), 149.
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8 See John Tomlinson, Globalization and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999),
and “Internationalism, Globalization, and Cultural Imperialism,” in Media and Cultural
Regulation, ed. Kenneth Thompson (London: Sage, 1997).
9 See Anthony Giddens, “Living in a Post-traditional Society,” in Reflexive Modernization:
Politics, Tradition, and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order, ed. Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens,
and Scott Lash (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994).
10 See Elihu Katz and Tamar Liebes, The Export of Meaning: Cross-cultural Readings of Dallas
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
11 Moeran B., “A Tournament of Value Strategies of Presentation in Japanese Advertising,”
Ethnos 58 (1993): 73–93.
12 For example, see Boyd-Barrett Oliver, “Global News Wholesalers As Agents of Globaliza-
tion,” in Media in Global Context: A Reader, ed. Annabelle Sreberny-Mohammadi, Dwayne
Winseck, Jim McKenna, and Boyd-Barrett Oliver (London: Arnold, 1997), for a good de-
scription of the limited global equality offered by global news.
13 Symbolic boundaries are one of the investigative foci of contemporary cultural sociology, and
their theories are also indirectly related to Douglas. For a discussion of symbolic boundaries,
see Michele Lamont and Marcel Fournier, eds., Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries
and the Making of Inequality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
14 One of the foci of my ongoing research on Chinese fashion is whether there is an intersub-
jectively defined geographic fashion hierarchy in China. I found that there is and that Hong
Kong and Shanghai occupy the top two positions in that hierarchy. See Matthew Chew,
“Fashion and Globalization in China: Revisiting the Problematic of Global Cultural Hier-
archy,” presented at the Triangle East Asia Colloquium, Duke University, Durham, N. C.,
October 2000.
15 See John Tomlinson, “Cultural Globalization and Cultural Imperialism,” in International
Communication and Globalization, ed. Ali Mohammadi (London: Sage, 1997), 170–190.
16 There will of course be exceptions to this pattern. For instance, when the state turns icon-
oclastic, it may seek specifically to endorse localizations of Western dress such as the Mao
suit. Also, it is ironic that hybrid styles should attract support from the state and nation, since
the value of hybrids for critics is that they represent a third space between the West and the
indigenous.
17 They are Zhang Ziyi, Michele Yeoh, and Coco Li. Li, the most Westernized of the three and
the East Asian spokesperson for the house of Chanel during that time, explicitly said in an
interview that she tried to represent the Chinese people at the Oscars.
18 Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for reminding me of the historical presence of exposed
short stockings among Japanese housewives and youths.
19 Since exposed short stockings were a hip street style, they were not widely displayed in Ginza,
Shinjuku, or mainstream magazines such as Non-no and An-an.
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20 The general acceptance of cuteness by the Japanese public is one of the ideological conditions
that allowed young women to play with the erotic symbolic value of stockings without serious
social punishment. See the useful discussion of cuteness as resistance in Brian McVeigh,
Wearing Ideology: State, Schooling, and Self-Representation in Japan (Oxford: Berg, 2000).
21 Although exposed short stockings made appearances in individualdesigners’ collections in the
few years before 2001, not until 2001 did the biggest brand names adopt them, and they caught
the media limelight. In the spring/summer 2001 shows, the collections of Marc Jacobs and
Nicole Miller featured colorful exposed short socks. They were made of thicker and opaque
materials. Miu Miu had beige stockings made of lighter and semitransparent materials.
Prada’s were clearly stockings instead of socks. They were black and semitransparent and
displayed a texture like nylon. In the winter/fall 2001 show, Cacharel’s collection made
conspicuous use of both exposed short socks and stockings, while Helmut Lang’s featured
short socks.
22 Exposed short stockings were spotted on fashion reporters, buyers, and models (in their casual
dress) at the fall/winter 2001 show in Milan. See Vogue Nippon, June 2001, 156.
23 Genevieve, “Chuanre wayu” [Spring’s stocking story], East Touch, no. 200, February 2001. It
is not by accident that the fashion reporter singles out Prada, Miu Miu, and Marc Jacobs for
discussion in her article. Prada under the direction of Miuccia Prada (whose nickname “Miu
Miu” is adopted for Prada’s diffusion line), Gucci, and Louis Vuitton under Marc Jacobs have
been the most venerated labels in Hong Kong in the past several years. There are three Prada
shops within the square mile of the Causeway Bay shopping district. Chances are even people
who are not fashion conscious recognize the labels. Their chic high-fashion image also has a
better chance of reappropriating exposed short stockings from mainland Chinese women.
24 Laoxiong, “Duanwa pei gaogunxie, laotu bian shiomao” [Short stockings matched with high
heels: An outdated provincial style becoming trendy], Hope, May 2001, 152–153.
25 Faye Wong’s exposed short stockings were covered by the fashion press on at least two
occasions. The article that discusses her shoes without commenting on her stockings is Fray,
“Ruying sidare gift guoxingdan” [Must-buy: Four hot gifts for Christmas], Easyfinder, no.
464, December 2000, 100.
26 As a sociologist of culture, I conceive of institutions and power in the present context in terms
of cultural institutions and cultural power. I am aware that some cultural critics implicitly or
unconsciously interpret institutions and power primarily in terms of political economy. My
conception of institution and power is cultural and not economical.
27 Institutions and power also constitute one of the argumentative foci in discussions on hy-
bridity in postcolonial studies. For example, Rey Chow critiques the “postmodern hybridite”
conception of hybridity as being oblivious to the global asymmetry of power. See Chow,
“Between Colonizers: Hong Kong’s Postcolonial Self-Writing in the 1990s,” in Ethics after
Idealism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 155–157. Peng Cheah takes issue with
hybridity theories’ neglect of institutions, particularly those of the state and nation, in Peng
positions
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Chew The Dual Consequences of Cultural Localization 509
Cheah, “Given Culture” boundary 2 24, no. 2 (summer 1997): 157–198. Numerous other post-
colonial critics query the notion of hybridity on issues related to institutions and power. See,
for example, John Kranisauskas, “Hybridity in the Transnational Frame: Latin-Americanist
and Post-colonial Perspectives on Cultural Studies,” in Hybridity and Its Discontents: Politics,
Science, Culture, ed. Avtar Brah and Annie Coombes (New York: Routledge 2000). An ex-
ample of sympathetic critique is Alberto Moreiras, “Hybridity and Double Consciousness,”
Cultural Studies 13, no. 3 (1999): 373–407. Although my critique of localization theories is
similar to these critiques, localization and hybridity represent disparate fields with different
theoretical imports and implications. As I argue in this article, cultural localization could
be seen as a specific type of cultural hybridization. Separate critiques of the two theories are
necessary.
positions
Published by Duke University Press
