Conspicuous Consumption and Leisure
In The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899), Veblen presented the concepts of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure. Conspicuous consumption is the application of money, and other resources, to display a higher social-status, e.g. the use of silver flatware at meals, although flatware made of other materials might functionally suffice. Moreover, Veblen goods are consumer goods made greatly desirable by high manufacturing cost, sale price, and scarcity in the market, especially “socially visible” consumer goods, rather than goods that are consumed in private.
Conspicuous leisure is the extended length of time that a person devotes to pleasurable pursuits that grant him or her a higher social-status; for example, to be a gentleman, a man must study philosophy and the fine arts, which were of limited economic value towards earning a living. Therefore, such intellectual activities displayed the rich person’s freedom from economic necessity, and from having to do a job or hold an occupation that requires performing economically productive manual labor; higher social status derives from not having to perform manual labor.
Read more about this topic: The Theory Of The Leisure Class
Famous quotes containing the words conspicuous consumption, conspicuous, consumption and/or leisure:
“The hippie is the scion of surplus value. The dropout can only claim sanctity in a society which offers something to be dropped out of—career, ambition, conspicuous consumption. The effects of hippie sanctimony can only be felt in the context of others who plunder his lifestyle for what they find good or profitable, a process known as rip-off by the hippie, who will not see how savagely he has pillaged intricate and demanding civilizations for his own parodic lifestyle.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“Linguistically, and hence conceptually, the things in sharpest focus are the things that are public enough to be talked of publicly, common and conspicuous enough to be talked of often, and near enough to sense to be quickly identified and learned by name; it is to these that words apply first and foremost.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“To expect to increase prices and then to maintain them at a higher level by means of a plan which must of necessity increase production while decreasing consumption is to fly in the face of an economic law as well established as any law of nature.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)