Conspicuous consumption

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Conspicuous consumption

Conspicuous consumption is a term used to describe the extravagant spending on goods and/or services obtained for the purposes of exhibiting affluence. For the conspicuous consumer, such display is important for attaining or maintaining social status. Another very similar term for this type of materialistic status self-definition is "keeping up with the Joneses”.

The term conspicuous consumption was introduced by the economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen in his 1899 book The Theory of the Leisure Class. Veblen used the term to depict characteristics of the nouveau riche, an emergent class of the 19th century, wealthy as a result of Second Industrial Revolution.

Presently, the term conspicuous consumption is applied more generally to those with expendable incomes whose spending patterns are driven by the desire to display their status rather than any inherent need of such wares. With the ever-increasing availability of ‘stuff’, people are becoming more inclined to define themselves by what they possess and the quest for higher status becomes increasingly accelerated.

EXTERNAL LINKS: Theory of the Leisure Class[1] by Thorstein Veblen at Project Gutenberg

Thorstein Veblen: Conspicuous Consumption[2], 1902 at Fordham University's "Modern History Sourcebook"

Sources:

Possessions 2, Notre Dame magazine :http://www.nd.edu/~ndmag/stuf2s99.htm

Veblen, Thorstein. (1899) Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions. New York: Macmillan. 400 pp. 1994 Dover paperback edition, ISBN 0-486-28062-4.

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