Status Symbols By Region and Time
What is considered a status symbol will differ among countries and cultural regions, based on their economic and technological development. Highly-valued status symbols may change over time. For example, before the invention of the printing press, possession of a large collection of books was considered a status symbol. After the advent of the printing press, books (and literacy) gradually became more common among average citizens, so the possession of books became less-rarefied as a status symbol. Another common status symbol of the European medieval past was heraldry, a display of one's family name and history. In some past cultures of East Asia, pearls and jade were major status symbols, reserved exclusively for royalty.
Read more about this topic: Status Symbol
Famous quotes containing the words status, symbols, region and/or time:
“screenwriter
Policemen so cherish their status as keepers of the peace and protectors of the public that they have occasionally been known to beat to death those citizens or groups who question that status.”
—David Mamet (b. 1947)
“The twentieth-century artist who uses symbols is alienated because the system of symbols is a private one. After you have dealt with the symbols you are still private, you are still lonely, because you are not sure anyone will understand it except yourself. The ransom of privacy is that you are alone.”
—Louise Bourgeois (b. 1911)
“For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“As the Americans slaughter millions of turkeys every year for the celebration of their deliverance, the Indians, who should be celebrated as saviors, have long been slaughtered. There was even a time when a white man was paid a very decent price for every Indian scalp he could produce.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)