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:
“Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.”
—Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929)
“The farmer imagines power and place are fine things. But the President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“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 is nothing more irritating to a feminist than the average “Woman’s Page” of a newspaper, with its out-dated assumption that all women have a common trade interest in the household arts, and a common leisure interest in clothes and the doings of “high society.” Women’s interests to-day are as wide as the world.”
—Crystal Eastman (1881–1928)