The age of affluence Flashcards
How can we track the growth in levels of consumption?
tracking ownership of specific consumer goods or commodities, such as automobiles, telephones, and more recently computers
What factors caused this growth in consumption levels?
- Food costs as proportion of household expenses shrunk over 100 years
- incomes of North American families have grown > more spending on cars+ houses
- mass production enables mass consumption
- access to credit supports consumption beyond means
What did the 1998 UN Human development report on consumption find?
- richest 20% of world population responsible for 75% of all private consumption/poorest 20% just 1.5%
- while high levels of consumption are enjoyed by the wealthy, the environmental damage from world consumption is often endured by the poor and the marginalized
What are the signs of a decline in global inequality?
- globally inequality has declined significantly in the last 25 years or so, with the major reason being China’s enormous economic growth.
What is the highest predictor of a person’s carbon footprint regardless pf their level of environmental consciousness?
income
What does veblen mean by “social status”?
referring to a hierarchy or ladder of social positions, and
the evaluations people make about where someone is located on that hierarchy.
What is a reason social status matters?
because it can serve as an important means for legitimizing the power that some people hold over others
What are the 2 ways of displaying wealth according to Veblen?
- conspicuous leisure
- conspicuous consumption
What is conspicuous leisure?
- people of high status (men in particular) not be engaged in “productive” (especially physical) labour
- they might in fact be surrounded by family members (women, wives and other female relatives) and even servants who were all largely exempt from labour
- common in pre-industrial era
- formed the leisure class
What is conspicuous consumption?
- consumption of material goods
- In less affluent societies, Veblen believed this could be achieved by consuming just beyond what was necessary
- over time developed into in very specific and luxurious forms
What 3 factors combined to cause decline of conspicuous leisure and rise of material consumption to display wealth?
- industrialisation changed nature of society
- Decline in traditional, rigid social hierarchies
- Competing values in society
How did industrialisation change the nature of society
- decline of a fully leisured class, fewer servants, and the rise of wage labor.
- Society became more urban, and more complex > leisure might not successfully convey one’s wealth anymore
- person in an urban setting is likely to come in contact with many people = consumption of goods becomes more effective means of communicating one’s wealth, power and status
How did a decline in traditional, rigid social hierarchies contribute to decline of conspicuous leisure in favour of material consumption?
- middle class and new, bourgeois or capitalist elites emerged = more fluid social structure –> more classes of people are likely to participate in some form of conspicuous consumption
- social and physical mobility made visible forms of consumption increasingly important to the construction of social status hierarchies > in modern societies, material consumption is more visible than leisure
How did competing values in society contribute to decline of conspicuous leisure in favour of material consumption?
- eg. instinct of workmanship
- positive value given to work in modern society
- hard work, skills, and “productive” can generate social esteem and respect
–> makes pure leisure problematic and not necessarily worthy of esteem
–> rich of 19th, 20th: tried to conceal their leisured lives by being “busy” in their leisure time, but at the same time not “indecorously productive.”
