Consumer Dependency 3 - Cengage EMEAcws.cengage.co.uk/himmelweit/ch03.pdf · 2005. 6. 10. · In...

3Consumer DependencyAndrew Trigg

Concepts andtechniquesConspicuous consumptionLuxury goodsVeblen demand curve

Theory of distinctionCultural capitalWant creationLatent needsConsumer dependency

Links� This chapter is a direct response to the discussion in the previous

chapter of the neoclassical idea of consumer sovereignty.

� In Chapter 2, it was shown that demand curves could have upwardssloping sections for Giffen goods; in this chapter the Veblen demandcurve slopes upwards for a different reason: conspicuous consumption.

� Concepts of personal and social capital, which are loosely related toBourdieu’s concept of cultural capital, are introduced in Chapter 7.

� Chapter 11 considers advertising designed to shape consumers’behaviour from the firm’s point of view.

1 Introduction

‘The life of a junior cavalry officer at the end ofthe nineteenth century was hardly onerous.Leave amounted to five months a year, andofficers were encouraged to spend the autumnand winter hunting. Churchill’s time in the 4thHussars was devoted largely to horse-riding,drill, playing polo, eating in the mess, andgambling and drinking in the evenings. Evenwhen on duty at Hounslow, west of London,there was still plenty of time for an active sociallife in the capital. His fellow officers were richand well-connected, and determined tomaintain the social exclusivity of the regiment.He fitted easily into this world and shared itsoutlook: he was one of the ringleaders inforcing out of the regiment Alan Bruce (whomhe had known at Harrow) because he had aprivate income of only £500 a year to live onin addition to his pay.As well as his pay and hisown small resources Churchill had anallowance of £300 a year from his mother andshe also gave him over £400 to help himpurchase clothes, saddles and a second horse.Even so his style of life – satin racing jackets, anumber of polo ponies and expensive clothes –meant that he was soon in debt. In his first twoyears in the Army he spent £144 (over £5000 attoday’s prices) on clothes from just one tailorand the bill was not paid for nearly sevenyears. In the summer of 1895 the 4th Hussarswere told that they would sail to India for anine year posting in just over twelve months.The result was even more leave and Churchillwas able to enjoy to the full the London season.’

(Ponting, 1995, p.18)

Born in 1874 at Blenheim Palace,the family seat of hisgrandfather the Duke of Marlborough, and destinedto be British Prime Minister and a celebrated warleader,Winston Churchill was in many ways the last ofthe great aristocrats. The quotation from ClivePonting’s biography of Churchill provides a revealinginsight,not only into the young Winston’s lifestyle,butalso into that of the English aristocracy in general atthe end of the nineteenth century. For this sociallyexclusive group, life was devoted to the lavish expen-diture of money on items of consumption and of timeon leisure activities.

These two characteristics of the aristocracy’sbehaviour – the intensive pursuit of consumerexpenditure and leisure – were the starting point forthe work of the American economist and sociol-ogist, Thorstein Veblen. In 1899, four years afterChurchill first joined the 4th Hussars, Veblenpublished his influential book entitled, The Theoryof the Leisure Class. In the book, Veblen asks whyare the aristocracy, and the rich and well-connectedin general, driven to devote so much of their timeand energy to what he regards as wasteful activities?In attempting to answer this question, Veblen notonly develops a theory of the consumptionbehaviour of the upper classes, he also provides anexplanation of the behaviour of people from othersocial classes who seek to emulate the behaviour oftheir ‘superiors’.

This Veblen-inspired approach, in whichconsumption is seen as a class phenomenon,provides the main focus of this chapter.This approachprovides a critique of the concept of consumer sover-eignty developed in the previous chapter. You mayrecall the quotation from Enoch Powell,at the start ofChapter 2, in which he described the role every indi-vidual has to play in the great ballot box of consumerdemocracy. In this neoclassical approach, consumershave their own independent tastes and preferencesand, by maximizing their utility, they have the powerto influence what is produced by firms in theeconomy. In the Veblen approach, however, indi-viduals derive their tastes and preferences from otherindividuals in the economy – their behaviour is deter-mined socially. Rich people seek to emulate thebehaviour of other rich people; poor people seek toemulate the behaviour of rich people.The result is aprocess of ‘keeping up with the Joneses’in which thebehaviour of consumers is not sovereign to each indi-vidual,but dependent on outside factors.

In Section 2,Veblen’s approach is examined withreference to his own writings where he developedan explanation of how consumption has evolvedover time by distinguishing between different stagesof history. Section 3 considers two case studieswhich illustrate some of Veblen’s ideas. The firstlooks at the development of consumer behaviour inthe eighteenth century,while the second examines amore modern example of luxury goods in the 1980s.

Section 4 considers the implications of Veblen’sapproach for the neoclassical theory of consumption,focusing on the relationship between prices and thetastes and preferences of individuals in the neoclassical

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approach. In Section 5 some problems with Veblen’sapproach are discussed. In particular, it is argued thatoften it is the lower classes that shape the devel-opment of consumer behaviour.

In view of these problems, a more general modelof consumer dependency, based upon the work ofthe French writer Pierre Bourdieu, is introduced inSection 6. In Bourdieu’s model the tastes of con-sumers are developed through a sophisticatedprocess of cultural learning. The degree to whichtastes develop depends directly on how individualsrelate to the social hierarchy.

Finally, Section 7 provides a discussion of the roleof firms in shaping consumer tastes. Following JohnKenneth Galbraith,consumer tastes can be argued tobe dependent on the advertising and marketingstrategies of firms.

All of these models follow in the tradition ofVeblen,the overriding theme being that of consumerdependency. The objective is to provide both acritique of the neoclassical model, since this is thedominant economic model, and to provide an alter-native framework in which consumption is viewedfrom a different perspective.

2 Conspicuous consumption

In developing his theory of consumption, Veblentakes as his starting point the way in which a leisureclass has evolved over time. For Veblen, the keyreason why a leisure class can evolve in any society isthat more goods are produced than are required forpeople to subsist on.This is also the view taken byKarl Marx in Capital (1867): that social classesevolve because a proportion of the population doesnot have to work. Those who do work produce asurplus which is appropriated by the ruling class.Earlier societies,Veblen argues, were only capable ofproducing enough goods for subsistence purposes.There was no material reason why social classesshould exist.The emergence of a leisure class, whichis not required to work and consumes the goodsproduced by members of lower classes, can onlyhappen if the lower classes produce more than theirsubsistence level of consumption. Each chief,baroness or king,can enjoy their class position in thesocial hierarchy only by living off the surplusproduced by the lower classes.

Once societies start to produce a surplus thisentails the introduction of private property. ‘Itbecomes indispensable to accumulate, to acquireproperty,in order to retain one’s good name’(Veblen,1899, p.19). A hierarchy develops in which somepeople own property and others do not. To ownproperty is to have status and honour, a position ofesteem in this hierarchy: to have no property is tohave no status.

Of course, the accumulation of property canindicate that a person has been efficient and productive– it can indicate prowess in financial matters. ButVeblen argues that inherited wealth confers even morestatus than wealth which is gained through efficiency.‘By a further refinement, wealth acquired passively bytransmission from ancestors or other antecedentspresently becomes even more honorific than wealthacquired by the possessor’s own effort’ (p.19). It couldbe argued,for example,that Winston Churchill’s family,the Marlboroughs, enjoyed more status in nineteenth-century England than the newly rich industrialists,whose new money was obtained through mining andshipbuilding.By similar reasoning, the Queen may alsobe accorded more status than, say, Richard Branson,founder of the Virgin empire. One is more likely tocurtsey to the Queen than to Richard Branson, eventhough he has displayed more industry and efficiencyin acquiring his position in society than has the Queen,whose position is inherited.

For Veblen, members of the leisure class enjoytheir status because they do not have to work.This isthe defining feature of being a member of the leisureclass. Wealth is produced by those who work andtransferred to those who do not work, the leisureclass. Unlike Marx, who concentrates on how thistransfer takes place,Veblen’s interest focuses on theway in which status is established, given that therehas been a transfer.

For Veblen, the ownership of property is notenough to give an individual status. If an individualamasses a great fortune but lives as a recluse in asmall house, that individual will have no status insociety. Status derives from social performance:from the judgements which other people make ofan individual’s position in society.To gain status anindividual must display wealth to others.

Veblen identifies two main ways in which an indi-vidual can display wealth.

� Leisure activities: That the young WinstonChurchill was able to spend five months of the

61CHAPTER 3 CONSUMER DEPENDENCY

year hunting, drinking and gambling, displayedthat he was a member of the leisure class.

� Expenditure on consumption goods: Churchill’slavish expenditure on clothes, saddles and horsesalso displayed that he was part of this class.

The common thread that runs through boththese methods of displaying wealth is, for Veblen,‘… the element of waste that is common to both’(p.53). Being able to afford horses and expensiveclothing and being able to spend months on endhunting and gambling, are so divorced from activ-ities that are productive they are characterized byVeblen as wasteful activities.‘In the one case it is awaste of time and effort, in the other it is a waste ofgoods’ (p.53). Being able to engage in suchwasteful activities is the key way in whichmembers of the leisure class display their wealthand status.

In principle, people can display their wealththrough either method with equal facility – all thisrequires is an effective network for word to getaround about a person’s degree of leisure and theobjects he or she possesses.Veblen argues, however,that as the population becomes more mobile,communities become less close-knit. In a moremobile society people may be less well informedabout the leisure activities in which other peopleengage, and so the display of wealth throughconsumption goods becomes more important thanthe display of leisure. Wealth is easily displayed bydriving a particular car or wearing clothes from aparticular designer.

Veblen labels this type of behaviour conspicuousconsumption. People spend money on artefacts ofconsumption to display their wealth;to indicate theirplace in the hierarchy.

Veblen views conspicuous consumption as themost important factor in determining consumerbehaviour, not just for the rich but for all socialclasses. ‘The result is that the members of eachstratum accept as their ideal of decency the schemeof life in vogue in the next higher stratum, and bendtheir energies to live up to that ideal’ (p.52). Eachsocial class tries to emulate the consumptionbehaviour of the class above it, to such an extent thateven the poorest people are subject to pressures toengage in conspicuous consumption.‘Very much ofsqualor and discomfort will be endured before thelast trinket or the last pretence of pecuniary decencyis put away’ (p.53).

This search for status through consumption isnever-ending. What at one time may confer statusmay later be acquired by all and confer no status.People must always try to acquire new consumptiongoods in order to distinguish themselves fromothers. When Veblen was writing in the 1880s, heviewed this drive for conspicuous consumption asthe main force behind the consumer boom that wasstarting to gain pace in the United States.

For Veblen, all sorts of consumption activitieswere indicative of conspicuous consumption: thefashion tastes of a rich lady; the gambling anddrinking of the aristocrat;the smoking behaviour of ajourneyman printer. Modern examples includeexpensive motor cars, holiday cruises, designerclothes, and membership of exclusive leisure clubs.Of course, consumers may not always consider theirconsumption behaviour to be conspicuous. In somecases, consumption goods may be perceived to beboth useful and confer status. In the next section Ilook in detail at some particular examples ofconspicuous consumption.

3 Case studies in marketing andconsumption

As the above exposition shows, Veblen’s approachlooks at the evolution of consumer behaviour overtime.For this reason, therefore, it is necessary to takean in-depth look at some examples of howconsumers have behaved in different periods ofhistory. In this section I examine two case studies:the first is taken from the eighteenth century, thesecond from the late twentieth century.

Although much has been written by historiansabout the Industrial Revolution which first tookplace in England during the eighteenth century, animportant parallel event was the revolution inconsumer behaviour. For the industrial revolution tohave taken place, it is argued, there must also havebeen a consumer revolution. Without new markets

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Conspicuous consumption

People engage in conspicuous consumption inorder to give an indication of their wealth to othermembers of society.

for the goods produced by the new methods offactory production, there would be no reason fornew factories to be built in the first place.The ‘bigquestion’ which needs to be addressed is why didthis consumer revolution take place?

Champions of this notion of a consumer revo-lution are the historians McKendrick, Brewer andPlumb, with their book The Birth of a ConsumerSociety (1982). Any recent book on the history ofconsumer behaviour will take McKendrick et al. asits starting point.

The following case study is an extract which looksat the growth in the consumption of pottery in theeighteenth century. In particular, it looks at thesuccess story of one of the great industrial pioneersof this time, Josiah Wedgwood. In reading it youshould try to work out how it relates to Veblen’sexplanation of how consumer behaviour hasevolved. After reading it through once, you will beasked some questions at the end.You might like tolook at the questions at the end of the case studybefore you start reading it.


Josiah Wedgwood and thecommercialization of the potteries

It is difficult for twentieth-century man to under-stand the excitement that was generated bypottery and porcelain in the eighteenth century.Toa society accustomed to regard crockery as ahumble and ubiquitous accompaniment toeveryday life, it is not easy to imagine the craving topossess it which gripped so many layers of eight-eenth-century society. Most people know of theway in which the Dutch in the seventeenth centurywere caught in a fever of speculation over thepossession and price of tulip bulbs,but very few arefamiliar with the far more important and far morepervasive china mania of the eighteenth century.

In the face of such ignorance, a consumer boomin pottery may seem an unlikely event. The aris-tocracy of England blocking the streets outsideWedgwood’s London showrooms in theireagerness to buy his latest pottery; ‘a violent vasemadness breaking out amongst the Irish’; an‘epidemical’ sickness to possess his wares amongstthe upper and middling ranks; an extension of themarket so profound that ‘common Wedgwood’

came within the reach of ‘common people’ – suchexcitement strikes a surprising note to a society soaccustomed to the almost universal possession ofample crockery that a hunger to possess it, acompulsive need to own the latest fashions in it, isdifficult to imagine. […]

When Josiah Wedgwood was born in 1730, theStaffordshire potters sold their wares almostsolely in Staffordshire. Their goods found theirsale in the local market towns, and occasionally,carried by pedlars and hawkers or on the backs ofthe wretched packmen of the eighteenth century,they reached further afield – to Leicester, Liv-erpool and Manchester. To sell in London in anyquantity was rare, to sell in Europe virtuallyunknown. Yet by 1795 Wedgwood had brokenthrough this local trade of fairs and pedlars to aninternational market based on elegant show-rooms and ambassadorial connections; he hadbecome the Queen’s potter and sold to everyregal house in Europe. […]

His name was known all over the world. It hadbecome a force in industry, commerce, science andpolitics. It dominated the potting industry. Men nolonger spoke of ‘common pewter’ but of ‘commonWedgwood’. […]

The reasons why Wedgwood prospered aboveall others have proved […] elusive.Most historianshave argued that his discoveries – green glaze,creamware, jasper and black basalt – won himtechnical supremacy over his rivals; and that hisfactory organization and division of labour – hisstated desire ‘to make such machines of the Menas cannot err’ – confirmed his superior quality. Butthis alone is not sufficient to explain hissupremacy. For his inventions were quickly copiedand his quality easily reproduced. They won himimmediate attention but they could not keep itunless he could afford to sell his ware morecheaply than his rivals.This historians have cheer-fully assumed.The statement by Professor Ashtonthat ‘it was by intensifying the division of labourthat Wedgwood brought about the reduction ofcost which enabled his pottery to find markets inall parts of Britain, and also of Europe andAmerica’ is merely the most recent and mostauthoritative of a long line of such views –Meteyard, Jewitt, Church, Smiles, Burton andTrevelyan all produce the same argument. They

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note the efficiency of Wedgwood’s factory system,his avoidance of waste, the drop in breakagesthrough the use of canals, the cheapening oftransport charges because of canals and turnpikeroads, and conclude that Wedgwood’s wares wereobviously cheaper than his rivals. Unfortunatelythey were not. His goods were always consid-erably more expensive than those of his fellowpotters: he regularly sold his goods at double thenormal prices, not infrequently at three times ashigh, and he reduced them only when he wished toreap the rewards of bigger sales on a product thathe had already made popular and fashionable at ahigh price, or when he thought the marginbetween his prices and those of the rest of thepottery had become too great. […]

Some idea of how this policy developed can begained from a letter he wrote to his partner,Bentley,in 1771. Faced with a mounting stock he was over-joyed at the prospect of a large order from Russia:‘This Russ.n trade comes very opportunely for theuseful ware,may prevent me lower.g the prices here,though it may be expedient to lower the prices ofthe Tableplates to 4/- Per doz in London, as ourpeople are lowering them to 2/3 or 2/- here. MrBaddeley who makes the best ware of any of thePotters here, an Ovenfull of it Per Diem has led theway, the rest must follow, unless he can be prevail’dupon to raise it again, which is not at all probable,though we are to see him tomorrow, about a doz.n

of us, for that purpose […] Mr Baddeley has reduc’dthe prices of the dishes to the prices of whitestone,[…] In short the General trade seems to me to begoing to ruin on the gallop – large stocks on handboth in London the country, little demand. ThePotters seem sensible of their situation, are quite ina Pannick for their trade, indeed I think with greatreason, for low prices must beget a low quality in themanufacture, which will beget contempt, which willbeget neglect,disuse,and there is an end of the trade.But if any one Warehouse, distinguish’d from therest, will continue to keep up the quality of theManufacture,or improve it, that House may perhapskeep up its prices, the general evil,will work a particulargood to that house,they may continue to sell Queensware at the usual prices, when the rest of the tradecan scarcely give it away. This seems to be all thechance we have, we must double our diligence hereto give it effect. […]’

He did this partly by the capture of the worldof fashion. For although Wedgwood had completeconfidence in his wares – writing, ‘wherever mywares find their way, they will command the firsttrade’ – he also realized that ‘Fashion is infinitelysuperior to merit in many respects, and it is plainfrom a thousand instances that if you have afavourite child you wish the public to fondle takenotice of, you have only to make choice of propersponcers [sic].’ The sponsors he aimed to win forhis pottery were the monarchy, the nobility, andthe art connoisseurs – in fact, the leaders offashion. He quickly realized that to make pots forthe Queen of England was admirable adver-tisement. To become the Queen’s Potter and towin the right to sell common earthenware asQueen’s ware, was even better. As Wedgwoodwrote: ‘the demand for this s.d Creamcolour, alias,Queensware, […] still increases. It is really amazinghow rapidly the use of it has spread over thewhole Globe, how universally it is liked. Howmuch of this general use, estimation, is owing tothe mode of its introduction – how much to itsreal utility beauty? are questions in which we maybe a good deal interested for the government ofour future Conduct.The reasons are too obviousto be longer dwelt upon. For instance, if a Royal,or Noble introduction be as necessary to the saleof an Article of Luxury, as real Elegance andbeauty, then the Manufacturer, if he consults hisown inter.t will bestow as much pains, expensetoo, in gaining the former of these advantages, ashe wo.d in bestowing the latter’.Wedgwood wasnot a man to fail to consult his own interests. Hetook immediate action. […]

By appealing to the fashionable cry for antiq-uities, by pandering to their requirements, byasking their advice and accepting their smallestorders, by flattery and attention, Wedgwoodhoped to monopolize the aristocratic market, andthus win for his wares a special distinction, a socialcachet which would filter through to all classes ofsociety. Everything was done to attract this aristo-cratic attention.A special display room was built tobeguile the fashionable company which Josiahdrew after him to Etruria; steps were taken tomake the London showroom attractive ‘to theladies’, and to keep the common folk out; he waseven prepared to adjust his prices downwards so

Much of Wedgwood’s energies were devoted toobtaining the support and patronage of the aris-tocracy.Each lord,earl and duke:each member of thearistocracy were worthy prey for Wedgwood’s‘flattery and attention’. Once he had monopolizedthe attentions of the aristocracy,Wedgwood obtainedfor his wares the ‘social cachet which would filterthrough to all classes of society’. It was not enoughfor Wedgwood merely to sell a small number ofgoods to this aristocracy. His great innovation was touse the ‘superior spirit’ of the aristocracy to unleashthe clamour of the lower classes for a small slice ofthe aristocracy’s respectability.This suggests that therevolution in consumer behaviour was driven byconspicuous consumption – by the desire ofmembers of each social strata to display theirdecency by emulating the behaviour of those in ahigher social strata.

The ‘real utility and beauty’ of Wedgwood’spottery was not central to his marketing strategy.Of equal, if not more, importance was thepatronage of the aristocracy. A vase may be madeusing the latest and most innovative techniques butif it was not fashionable then it would not sell.‘Fashion’, states Wedgwood,‘is superior to merit’.Atfirst sight Wedgwood’s position may appeardirectly to contradict the neoclassical theory ofutility maximization. Consumers are less interestedin the utility of pottery than its fashionability.However, it should be emphasized that Wedgwoodis employing the word utility in a different wayfrom the definition used in neoclassicaleconomics. In Chapter 2, utility was defined as thepleasure which an individual gains fromconsumption. Wedgwood, on the other hand, usesthe other definition of utility which represents theusefulness of an object.

Under the neoclassical definition, consumers ofWedgwood’s pottery could indeed be maximizing


that they could be paid genteely, writing to hispartner ‘I think what you charge 34/- should […]be […] a Guinea a half, 34 is so odd a sum there isno paying it Genteely […]’. Once attracted every-thing was done to keep such attention.The goodwill of Wedgwood patrons never withered fromneglect. Sir George Strickland was asked for adviceon getting models from Rome; Sir WilliamHamilton was asked for advice on gilding; theywere complimented by the reproduction of theircountry houses on the great Russian service; andgreat care was taken to flatter them by giving themfirst sight of any new discovery.The first Etruscanvases, for instance, were shown before they wereput on sale to ‘Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, MrsChetwynd, Lord Bessborough, Earl of Stamford,Duke of Northumberland, Duke of Marlborough,Lord Percy, Lord Carlisle St James’s Place, Earl ofDartmouth, Lord Clanbrazill, Lord Torrington, MrHarbord Harbord’.These were the nucleus of anaristocratic claque that did Wedgwood untoldgood. They praised his ware, they advertised it,they bought it, and they took their friends to buyit. Wedgwood had no scruples about exploitingtheir friendship and their praise. In 1776, forinstance, by artful flattery he carefully preparedthe ground for his new Bassrelief vases at the nextseason’s sale, writing to Bentley, ‘Sir WilliamHambleton, our very good Friend is in Town –Suppose you shew him some of the Vases, a fewother Connoisieurs [sic] not only to have theiradvice, but to have the advantage of their puffingthem off against the next Spring, as they will, bybeing consulted, and flatter’d agreeably, as youknow how, consider themselves as a sort ofparties in the affair, act accordingly.’ In the small,interconnected, gossip-ridden world of the Englisharistocracy in the eighteenth century, such intro-ductions were vital, for even a very few sales couldhave an important effect.

For the lead of the aristocracy was quicklyfollowed by other classes. Fashions spread rapidlyand they spread downwards. But they needed alead. As Wedgwood put it, ‘Few ladies, you know,dare venture at anything out of the common stile[sic] ‘till authoris’d by their betters – by the Ladiesof superior spirit who set the ton’.

Source: McKendrick et al., 1982

Question

� How well does the theory of conspicuousconsumption explain Wedgwood’s marketingstrategy?

� What importance did Wedgwood place onconsumers’ maximization of utility?

� Explain the relationship between the demandfor Wedgwood’s pottery and its price.

utility.All that matters to the neoclassical notion ofutility is that they seek as much pleasure as possible.It is not for Wedgwood or Veblen,or anybody else, tojudge whether consumers purchase pottery eitherfor its merit or its fashionability – all that matters isthat they glean pleasure from its consumption.

Implicit in Wedgwood’s approach, however, is avalue judgement that his pottery has,on the one hand,a certain degree of real merit or usefulness,and,on theother, a groundless fashionability. This fits perfectlywell with Veblen’s categorization of conspicuousconsumption as a wasteful activity, that although indi-viduals gain pleasure from consumption, their pursuitof fashion has no real substance.Instead of being inde-pendent, their tastes and preferences are dependentupon the behaviour of others. Instead of beingexogenous, coming from inside the individual’spsyche, tastes are endogenous, dependent upon therest of society.

The relationship between the demand forWedgwood’s pottery and its price has importantimplications for the neoclassical theory ofconsumption. In Chapter 2 a downward slopingdemand curve for a typical good G, as shown inFigure 3.1, was derived from the tastes and prefer-ences of individual consumers. For the consumptionof a typical good, a reduction in price generates anincrease in market demand.

This view of the relationship between price anddemand appears to have been held by most ofWedgwood’s competitors in the pottery industry. Inresponse to the glut of 1771, Wedgwood’s com-petitors were lowering prices in an attempt to selltheir surplus stock of pottery. Wedgwood’s mainworry,however,was that if he too followed this trendit would lead to the ‘contempt’of his customers.Theywould associate the low price of the pottery withlow quality. The price of Wedgwood pottery, there-fore, was maintained at a high level. In Wedgwood’sview the demand curve for his pottery was notdownward sloping: low prices meant less demand,not more.

The next case study looks at a more recentexample of the demand for luxury goods in the1980s. In reading it you should once again try towork out the role of Veblen’s theory of the leisureclass and the neoclassical theory of utility maxi-mization; and also try to assess the relationshipbetween price and demand.

66 CONSUMPTION

D

Pri

ce o

fG

Quantity of GO

Figure 3.1 The downward sloping demand curve

Reflection

What shape do you think Wedgwood believed thedemand curve for his pottery would take?


The luxury goods trade: upmarketphilosophy

At this time of year, the normally sedate scarf-counter of the swish Hermes boutique on the Ruedu Faubourg Saint-Honore in Paris looks like thediscount aisle in a department store. Though theshoppers are draped in haute couture, they pawover the merchandise as frantically as any blue-jeaned bargain-hunter. Priced at FF1,150 (US$215), the Hermes silk scarf, favoured by suchupmarket icons as Queen Elizabeth, is no bargain.No matter. In the week before Christmas, one issold every 24 seconds. Few of those diving into thedesigner-scarf scrum are likely to have heard ofThorstein Veblen – though some might think theyown an evening gown from his autumn collection.Yet if Veblen were alive today he would recognisethem instantly. […]

Veblen’s argument was that as wealth spreads,what drives consumers’ behaviour is increasinglyneither subsistence nor comfort but the attainmentof ‘the esteem and envy of fellow men’. At the time,academics thought this mildly convincing. By the1980s it was commonplace.As economies boomed,the nouveaux riches joined the vieux riches in aVeblenian binge.Hermes ties protruded from everystriped collar; Rolexes were worn loose on everylanguid wrist. In the City of London,people wateredtheir plants with Perrier and watered themselveswith Dom Perignon. Louis Vuitton became Tokyo’sfavourite Frenchman.

As this brand-studded description suggests, thebeneficiary was the luxury goods trade. […]

But exactly what sort of goods? The answer isunduly costly ones, which Veblen describes asfalling into ‘accredited canons of conspicuousconsumption, the effect of which is to hold theconsumer up to a standard of expensiveness andwastefulness in his consumption of goods and hisemployment of time and effort’ […] indeed,Veblenargued that since the reasons for buying suchgoods are pecuniary emulation and invidiouscomparison, their utility actually rises as theirprices go up.

Of course, consumers do not admit it. Insteadthey say that these products are more beautiful,or of better quality. Veblen replies: consider a

hand-wrought spoon of pure silver. Many wouldfind it lovely and pay a hefty premium for it. Nowimagine that the spoon is revealed to be a verygood fake. Although it would still be the samespoon, Veblen plausibly claims that its ‘utility,including the gratification which the user derivesfrom its contemplation as an object of beauty,would immediately decline by some eighty orninety per cent’.

For evidence that he was right about the rela-tionship between the price and the perceived valueof snobby goods, look at the table.

Table 2.1 Luxury good prices

PercentagePrice increase

Item and Base 1992 nominal real base year year ($) ($) terms

Russian caviar 1.40 129 9 130 5352oz (1912)

Jaguar most 1 085.00 73 545 6 680 560expensive two-seater (1932)

Parker Duofold 7.30 236 3 130 300fountain pen (1927)

Purdey shotgun 435.00 38 380 8 720 425top of the line (1901)

Dunhill lighter 19.00 205 980 122‘Rollagas’ silver plate (1958)

Louis Vuitton 29.00 1 670 5 660 295suitcase (1912)

Cartier Tank 155.75 4 180 2 580 242watch (1921)

Champagne 1.85 34 1 710 25non-vintage bottle (1912)

Source: The Economist, 26 December 1992

Over the past 100 years or so, the real cost ofmany classic luxury items has soared. As wealthhas spread, so rich consumers have been prepared

Table 2.1 shows that, for a selection of luxurygoods, firms are ever more disposed to charge highprices. The price of a Louis Vuitton suitcase, forexample,has increased by just under 300 per cent inreal terms over the period 1912–92. Russian caviarhas increased in price by 535 per cent during thisperiod.The spread of wealth to the nouveaux riches,or newly rich, has meant that to display their wealththrough conspicuous consumption, people need tobuy even more expensive luxury goods than before.As the marketing manager interviewed by TheEconomist made clear, there is no point, except inthe short run, in firms attempting to sell more luxurygoods by reducing prices to increase demand – inthe long run, the downward sloping demand curvedoes not apply.

An important insight given by this case study isthat the tastes and preferences of individualconsumers can actually vary as the price changes.The more expensive a designer good,the more utilityan individual may receive from its consumption.Theimplication of this insight for the neoclassical theoryof consumption will be explored in the next section.

4 Implications for neoclassicaltheory

In Chapter 2,the typical consumer’s demand decisionwas determined by the nature of his or her tastes and

preferences. If a person has a preference for oneparticular good over another, then this determineshow that person’s demand decision might respond toany price change. The consumer is shown to besovereign in deciding how much to consume of eachgood. In the neoclassical theory of consumption thepreferences of each individual determine what firmsshould produce in the market place.

A key feature of this neoclassical approach is aseparation of the preference sphere from the pricesphere. The preference sphere is firmly rooted ineach individual’s psychology – each individual hashis or her own tastes and preferences. The pricesphere, on the other hand, is located in the market-place. Firms supply goods and consumers demandgoods such that the price is determined as a marketoutcome.The driving force for this market outcomecomes from outside the market – from inside thepsyche of individual consumers. In the neoclassicalapproach, the preference sphere dominates theprice sphere.

Veblen’s approach represents a direct challengeto this separation of the preference and pricespheres.The two case studies above have shown thatthe preferences and decisions of consumers can bedependent upon the price level. Both Wedgwood inthe 1700s and the designer goods shops in the 1980sprovide examples in which reductions in the pricelevel were looked upon unfavourably by consumers.In such examples, if the price of a good falls, the pref-erence which the individual has for that good is alsoreduced. This phenomenon is explored in thefollowing example.

Picture this scene. Mrs Connaught-Brown is awealthy widow living in Berkeley Square, London.Each Thursday she hosts a dinner party to which sheinvites friends and acquaintances. In treating herguests she likes to purchase a combination ofRussian caviar and champagne.

On her trips to Harrods, Mrs Connaught-Brownnotices a disturbing trend.The queues at the caviarcounter seem to be getting longer and the type ofperson standing in the queue also appears to bechanging. She is increasingly engaged in conver-sation with ladies with distinctly northern Englishaccents, who are visiting London to see, amongstother things, Andrew Lloyd-Webber musicals. Beingof good breeding she is, of course, perfectly civil tothese ladies, with whom she enjoys good conver-sation.She wonders,however,why are they suddenlypurchasing caviar? The penny begins to drop that,

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to pay ever larger sums to demonstrate status.This has not been lost on luxury goods firms. Asthe marketing manager at one such company putsit: ‘Our customers do not want to pay less. If wehalved the price of all our products, we woulddouble our sales for six months and then wewould sell nothing.’

Source: The Economist, 26 December 1992

Reflection

Consider the implications of the two case studiesfor the neoclassical theory of consumption. Inparticular, what will the indifference curves andassociated demand curves look like?

over a period of time and due to the opening up oftrade relations with Russia, the price of caviar hasfallen from £40 per ounce to £20 per ounce. Theperfectly affable northern ladies can now afford topurchase an ounce of caviar for the price of a Marksand Spencer’s cardigan.

Without experiencing any malice towards theladies in the Marks and Spencer’s cardigans, MrsConnaught-Brown becomes less interested inpurchasing caviar. She and her friends find caviar tobe less fashionable than before, so that their interestin buying it is reduced.Caviar is now so cheap that itis less suitable for the purposes of conspicuousconsumption – it provides a less suitable vehicle fordisplaying Mrs Connaught-Brown’s wealth at herweekly dinner party.

This example can be further explored using theconcept of the indifference map, which was intro-duced in Chapter 2. In Figure 3.2, caviar is repre-sented by good G. Although the price of G hasfallen, Mrs Connaught-Brown’s demand for G fallsfrom G1 to G2 units. This reduction in demand istranslated in part (b) of Figure 3.2 into an upwardsloping demand curve. Leibenstein (1950) hasreferred to this as the Veblen demand curve.On thisVeblen demand curve (DV) each reduction in theprice level of a good results in a reduction of theamount demanded.

In part (a) of Figure 3.2, the individual chooses acombination of goods F and G at the initial bundle A.The fall in the price of G is represented by a shift ofthe budget constraint line from ZS to line ZT. Since


A

B

Go

od

F

Good G

Indifference curves fornew preferences

Indifference curves fororiginal preferences

G2

Quantity of Good G(b) The Veblen demand curve

(a) A reduction in price

Pri

ce o

f G

oo

dG

G2

DV

G1O

O G1

Z

S T

Figure 3.2 Deriving the Veblen Demand Curve

the price of F remains the same, the line pivotsaround the fixed point Z on the F axis.

For Mrs Connaught-Brown,good G becomes a lessattractive vehicle for conspicuous consumption.There is a shift in her indifference map.She consumesa new combination of F and G at bundle B. If therehad been no change in preferences, as shown by theoriginal indifference curves, then consumption of Gwould have increased after the price change to G atbundle C, but with the indifference curves for newpreferences she moves to a new bundle, bundle B.Under conspicuous consumption there is a change ofpreference in response to the price change.

The ladies from the north of England, in thisexample, have downward sloping demand curves.Since the price of caviar has fallen,they demand moreof it. However, one may wonder whether the ladiesfrom the north of England will continue to be inter-ested in caviar once they realize that Mrs Connaught-Brown and her friends no longer buy it. As themarketing manager of the luxury goods firm in thesecond case study commented,the drop in price maygenerate a short run increase in demand, but in thelong run, once a good loses its luxury status, marketdemand may fall. The upward sloping individualdemand curves for Mrs Connaught-Brown and herfriends, and the tendency of others to emulate them,may translate into an upward sloping market demandcurve – a long run market Veblen demand curve.

This derivation has two important implications forthe neoclassical theory of consumption.First, it opensup the possibility that consumers are not sovereign ina market economy. Instead of their tastes and prefer-ences determining the price level, causation is in theopposite direction: the price level determines theconsumers’ tastes and preferences.To recap: followingan event in Russia,there is an exogenous change in theprice level, which, via the reaction of the northernladies, leads to a change in the preference for caviar ofMrs Connaught-Brown.Her tastes and preferences areendogenous,dependent on the price level.Consumersno longer tell prices (and thus consumers) what to do.Instead prices tell consumers what they like. In thisinterpretation, it is the price sphere which dominatesthe preference sphere. Second, if the market Veblendemand curve is upward sloping, the demand andsupply analysis which is central to neoclassical theorybecomes problematic. As discussed in Chapter 2, ifmarket demand curves are upward sloping, there maybe multiple equilibria – no unique equilibriumbetween demand and supply is established.The case of

conspicuous consumption provides an additionalreason why such problems can occur in the neoclas-sical approach.

5 Problems with conspicuousconsumption

This chapter has thus far provided an introduction toVeblen’s theory of conspicuous consumption using anumber of examples. From Josiah Wedgwood’sexpensive wares, to the scarf counter on the Rue duFaubourg Saint-Honore and Mrs Connaught-Brown’sdinner party,each example has the overriding themeof conspicuous consumption in common. In eachexample it is the behaviour of the rich and aristo-cratic that consumers seek to emulate, be it in theconsumption of pottery, designer scarves or caviar.Veblen argues that the underlying motive for thisconspicuous consumption is its wastefulness. Tospend such large amounts of money on wastefulproducts provides a clear message that the moneyhas not been earned through productive activity. Ifthe money had been sweated for in a factory or on abuilding site, it would not be so readily wasted onobscure fish eggs or garish dinner sets. Conspicuousconsumption provides a modern day equivalent toconspicuous leisure.

Where they engage in conspicuous consumption,the good in question may be referred to as a luxurygood.They may, for example,buy a designer jacket ora motor car, with some inkling that this will impresspeople as a luxury good.You may have neighbourswho spend hundreds of pounds on a personalizednumber plate,perhaps the ultimate luxury good of nopractical use.While neoclassical economists concedethat some luxury goods may have Veblen demandcurves, they would still hold,however, that in generalthe demand decisions of consumers are determinedby their own independent tastes and preferences.

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Question

Consider the consumer goods on which yourneighbours, where you live, tend to spend money.To what extent could their consumption bedescribed as conspicuous?

The argument against the general relevance ofconspicuous consumption is not just that manyconsumers have income levels which are too low forthem to afford luxury goods and are,therefore,unableto play the game of conspicuous consumption. Evenat quite high levels of income, consumers may stillnot be interested in emulating the behaviour of therich. Mason (1981, p.111) argues that working-classpeople are ‘either unwilling or unable to break away’from some peer group pressures.

A simple example of this argument is providedby the wearing of jeans, a garment traditionallyworn by manual workers. As the social uniform ofyouth, there is social pressure to own and wear apair of jeans. A young British working-class maleembarking on a Saturday night out may be doingplenty of overtime, earning good money, andtherefore be able to spend a reasonably largeamount of money on clothes.However,he may wellchoose to wear jeans – ostensibly ‘work clothing’ –for his outing, being ‘forced’ to wear trousers, andsometimes a jacket and tie,only if he intends to gainentry to a night club.The social norm, if he is onlygoing to a pub, is to wear jeans. There is no aspi-ration to wear suits, shirts and ties – attire which istypically worn by the upper classes.

Fine and Leopold (1993) view jeans as an exampleof goods which serve as necessities. As aconsumption good, their origin in the United Stateswas as an affordable,strong and long-wearing item ofwork clothing. The mass production of jeans hasmeant that the cost of production, and hence theprice, is so low that they can be sold to a massmarket.The argument here is that, for working-classpeople, the driving force for consumption is notprovided by the emulation of higher social classes,but by the necessities of everyday life.

Thus a possible problem with Veblen’s approachis that it plays down the role of working-class valuesin influencing consumption,emphasizing the trickledown of consumption patterns from the rich to thepoor when often it is the trickle up which may beimportant.Even Princess Diana wore a pair of jeans,atraditional item of work clothing, so in this case it isnot the aristocracy who are setting the trend but theeveryday worker.

It is unlikely, however, that Princess Diana bought‘ordinary’ jeans.There is a market for designer jeanswhich are differentiated from ordinary jeansaccording to their label. It should also be noted thatjeans are very much an American product and hence

may be associated with wealth and prosperity.Nevertheless, the point can still be made that thesocial origin of this product stems from working-class consumption.The original take-off of jeans as amass produced item of consumption did not takeplace because of the behaviour of the upper classes.

This argument against Veblen’s approach is particu-larly relevant to the case of Josiah Wedgwood.To recap,the historians McKendrick et al.argue that Wedgwoodpioneered the revolution in pottery consumption thattook place in the eighteenth century. Generalizingfrom the pottery industry,they argue that the IndustrialRevolution in England would not have been possiblewithout a parallel consumer revolution.To have massproduction there must also be mass consumption.Wedgwood is argued to have sparked off the consumerrevolution in pottery consumption by courting thepatronage of the European aristocracy. The scrambleto buy pottery that took place is attributed to the needto emulate the behaviour of the aristocracy.

Weatherhill (1986) reports, however, that at thetime of its rapid expansion in the eighteenth century,the pottery industry employed only 1 per cent of thetotal number of industrial workers in Britain. WithWedgwood representing one among many potterymanufacturers,we should be careful not to place toomuch importance on his role as a pioneer of aconsumer/industrial revolution.

Furthermore,Weatherhill argues that even the otherpottery manufacturers did not take their lead fromWedgwood.We saw in the McKendrick case study thatWedgwood courted the London aristocracy by invitingthem to his exclusive showrooms, which wereserviced by London warehouses. McKendrick arguesthat ‘Josiah Spode … and finally Minton followedWedgwood’s lead and established warehouses andshowrooms in London’ (quoted by Weatherhill, 1986,p.212).For Weatherhill,however,the warehouses usedby Wedgwood’s competitors were of a different type.Josiah Spode, for example, made use of a warehousewhich was run by his son, Josiah Spode II.Yet this wasa business independent from Spode’s factory in NorthStaffordshire and dealt with pottery produced by othermanufacturers apart from Spode. Indeed, forWeatherhill it was this model that was to provide thelead for all pottery manufacturers as the eighteenthcentury ran into the nineteenth. ‘Producers began torely on a distribution network, and gradually came torely less on their own London warehouses’(p.212).

It has even been argued that Wedgwood heldback the pace of change in the pottery industry.


Wedgwood’s strategy was to court the luxurymarket by charging a high price,in the hope of even-tually reaching a wider market when he subse-quently lowered prices. Far from pioneering theopening up of a mass market for pottery, Fine andLeopold argue that this strategy could have delayedthe increase in demand. If Wedgwood had put all hiseffort into affordable pottery which everyone couldbuy – similar to the case of jeans – the pottery revo-lution may have been more vibrant than it actuallyproved to be. ‘It is at least as plausible to see theluxury market of the eighteenth century as anobstacle to the development of mass production forthe lower classes in the nineteenth century,as it is toview it as a stimulus to emulation from below’ (Fineand Leopold,1993,p.79).

For many goods there is not even an opportunityfor emulation to take place. Take, for example, therise in the domestic consumption of coal in the eigh-teenth century – by at least 3 million tonnes perannum from 1700 to 1800 (Flinn, 1984, p.252).According to Fine and Leopold (1993,p.79), this wasmade possible by a number of factors, including thecost of production, income levels and rates of popu-lation growth.‘Yet it would be far-fetched to view therise in coal consumption as originating out of theemulative behaviour of the lower classes (withfashion emanating from London as the majordomestic market).’

As the neoclassical economist might argue, thereis some evidence for saying that conspicuousconsumption can take place for certain luxurygoods, but there are also many other goods such ascoal, jeans and ordinary pottery, for which Veblen’stheory breaks down. It can, therefore, be argued thatVeblen’s theory of conspicuous consumption doesnot represent a general critique of the neoclassicaltheory of consumption – it cannot be applied to allgoods and to the behaviour of all social classes.

6 The theory of ‘Distinction’

A more general theory of consumption,which to someextent builds upon Veblen’s approach, is provided bythe French writer Pierre Bourdieu. Campbell (1995,p.103) has described Bourdieu as ‘the most importantcontemporary theorist of consumption proper’ andstated that Bourdieu’s work, Distinction: A Social

Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1979), ‘bearscomparison, in character and importance, withVeblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class’ (p.103). LikeVeblen, Bourdieu looks at consumption as a classphenomenon. The tastes that consumers display intheir consumption decisions are inextricably tied upwith the position they hold in the social hierarchy.

Following Veblen,Bourdieu also views consumptionbehaviour as an evolutionary phenomenon (see Trigg,2001). A consumer’s tastes are not a given or fixedentity, as in the indifference curve diagram. Tastesevolve over time; they are cultivated by the individual.In the same way that a farmer may invest energy indeveloping land in order to cultivate crops, the indi-vidual invests in the cultivation of tastes.To becomecultured in one’s tastes requires the investment of timeand energy – the pursuit of cultural capital.

Here is an exercise based on the type of questionasked by Bourdieu in a questionnaire he carried out inthe mid-1960s on a sample of over 1200 French people.

72 CONSUMPTION

Cultural capital

Refers to an individual’s accumulated stock ofknowledge about the products of artistic and intel-lectual traditions.

Exercise 3.1

Name the composers of the following pieces ofmusic.(Calculate your score out of 15 after checking theanswers).

1 The Double Cello Quintet2 The Apassionata3 Pictures from an Exhibition4 The Messiah5 The Ring Cycle6 St Matthew Passion7 Tales from the Vienna Woods8 The Hebrides Suite9 Coppelia

10 From the New World11 The London Symphony12 Les Sylphides13 The 1812 Overture14 Enigma Variations15 Peer Gynt

The number of correct answers provides a roughguide to your cultural capital. At one end of the scale,if you can name all the composers, this might showthat you have maximum cultural capital. If youcannot name any, your cultural capital is zero.Acquired knowledge of culture is viewed as capital,in the same way that a farmer might acquire capitalin the form of machinery.

Bourdieu found the score that people achieved inthis type of exercise was closely correlated to theireducational qualifications. In his sample, 67 per centof those individuals with only basic education couldnot identify more than two composers. In contrast,78 per cent of teachers in higher education couldname twelve or more composers.There is a generalculture, of which knowledge and appreciation ofmusic is a part, which becomes more developed themore education an individual undergoes.Why shouldsomebody with educational qualifications acquireknowledge of certain types of culture? They may notseek to do so, but may pick up this knowledgethrough contact with people of similar levels ofeducation. More importantly, however, Bourdieu(1979, p.23) argues that the acquisition of culturalcapital is ‘inscribed, as an objective demand, inmembership of the bourgeoisie and in the qualifica-tions giving access to its rights and duties’. Tobecome accepted as part of the bourgeoisie onemust be at ease with the various concerts and exhi-bitions which make up the cultural social circuit.One must keep up with dinner party conversationwhich drifts between comparisons of conductorsand ballerinas, tenors and sculptors.This is not to saythat culture is all the bourgeoisie talks about; onlythat it is an important entry requirement.

In addition to educational qualifications,a person’ssocial origin is of vital importance to the level ofcultural capital which is acquired.While a person ofworking-class background might bone up on classicalmusic through listening to Radio 3 and Classic FM,forthe person of upper-class origin, classical music ispart of their upbringing. Bourdieu observes that‘when the child is introduced at an early age to a“noble” instrument – especially the piano – the effectis at least to produce a more familiar relationship tomusic, which differs from the always somewhatdistant, contemplative and often verbose relation ofthose who have come to music through concerts oreven only through records’ (p.75).

It should be pointed out, in case you have notrealized,that knowledge of the composers asked for in

the previous exercise, even if you knew all fifteen,might not be evidence of too much cultural capital.Bourdieu distinguishes between middlebrow andhighbrow taste,and I am afraid that the Messiah and the1812 Overture may relate more to the former: they aremore Classic FM than Radio 3.Since Bourdieu’s originalquestions are not fully reported in his book,I have illus-trated his approach using a comparable questionwhich,coming from me,is necessarily middlebrow.

For those who do not have the right social back-ground to become accomplished in their knowledgeof classical music, the area of film may provide amore convenient outlet. As a form of art,film is not aslegitimate as classical music – Bourdieu refers to filmas ‘not yet fully legitimate’ art (p.87). However,despite its limitations, in metropolitan areas such asLondon and Paris, knowledge of films is central todinner party conversation.

Bourdieu asked his sample of individuals this typeof question. He found that only 5 per cent of thosewith just elementary education could name at leastfour directors;of those with higher education,22 percent could name at least four directors.In addition,he


Exercise 3.2

Name the directors of the following films.(Calculate your score out of 20 after checking youranswers).

1 A Clockwork Orange2 Lawrence of Arabia3 JFK4 ET5 On the Waterfront6 Pulp Fiction7 Hannah and Her Sisters8 Citizen Kane9 The Maltese Falcon

10 The Third Man11 North by Northwest12 Persona13 Stagecoach14 Fantasia15 Malcolm X16 La Grande Illusion17 Land and Freedom18 Little Man Tate19 Braveheart20 Gone With The Wind

found that those with just elementary educationtended to be more interested in actors than directors.‘Where some only see “a Western starring BurtLancaster”, others “discover an early John Sturges” or“the latest Sam Peckinpah”’ (p.28). There is a rightway of seeing a film, and a right kind of film to see. Itis no big deal if you managed to identify the Spielbergfilm,since he is well known,but being able to identifythe Jean Renoir film shows culture and taste. Cultureand taste can depend less on your direct enjoymentfrom,say,watching a Burt Lancaster film than on yourknowledge of who directed it.

According to Bourdieu, therefore, you should notfeel at all upset or discouraged even if you could notname any composers or film directors.Moreover,if youcould name more of the actors in the films than thedirectors, this may indicate that your enjoyment ofthese films was less contrived.Taste is always a negativephenomenon in that it is based on a criticism of thatwhich is popular. The establishment will always try todistinguish their tastes from popular taste. ‘It is noaccident that, when they have to be justified, they areasserted purely negatively, by the refusal of othertastes’ (p.56). In social competition there is no gainfrom preferring Spielberg to Jean Renoir, since theformer is watched by the working classes in droves,whilst the latter is not.Tastes do not come from inside;they are driven by the need for distinction – the needto distinguish one’s tastes from that which is popular.

A possible illustration of this drive for distinction isprovided by recent developments in the market forclassical music.Opera,once the exclusive preserve ofthe upper classes, has entered into the realm ofpopular music.The three tenors – Domingo, Carrerasand Pavarotti – sang to sell-out open air shows in theearly 1990s. By the mid 1990s, however, the SundayTimes (21 April 1996) reported that ‘classical musichas become the latest victim of middle-class “culturefatigue”’and ‘the loss of interest by those who regardopera as a ladder for social advancement … resultedin lower classical record sales and declining concertaudiences’. Could this be anything to do with theinterest which the working classes have shown inopera since Nessum Dorma was used as a themetune for television coverage of the 1990 World Cup?

In the same way that those higher up the socialhierarchy will tend to distinguish themselves fromthose at the bottom, it also follows for Bourdieu thatthose at the bottom have their own values and tastes.Take the photograph of an old woman’s handsshown in Figure 3.3.

Bourdieu showed this photograph to his samplegroup and asked them how they felt about it.Working-class respondents tended to respond with distaste:‘“Oh, she’s got terribly deformed hands!” … “The oldgirl must’ve worked hard.Looks like she’s got arthritis”’(Bourdieu,1979,p.44).For respondents at higher levelsof the social hierarchy, however, the responses aremuch more abstract: ‘ “The sort of hands you see inearly Van Goghs, an old peasant woman or peopleeating potatoes” … “I find this a very beautiful photo-graph.It’s the very symbol of toil. It puts me in mind ofFlaubert’s old servant-woman”’ (p.45).The implicationis that working-class people see things as they are.Theydislike the old lady’s hands, because for them hardwork is not beautiful or artistic, but an economicnecessity. For the holder of cultural capital, the inten-tion is to establish distance from economic necessity.Acultural detachment, which views the old woman’shands as a piece of art ‘can only be constituted withinan experience of the world freed from urgency andthrough the practice of activities which are an end inthemselves,such as scholastic exercises or the contem-plation of works of art’ (p.54). Since for working-classpeople the immediate urgency is to make ends meet,there is little room for cultural endeavours.

This supposed working-class attitude to culturalendeavours extends to the consumption of goodsand services in general. A whole series of differentquestions are asked in Bourdieu’s questionnaire. Inaddition to items of cultural consumption, such asvisits to the cinema, Bourdieu also considers morebasic items such as food,clothing and furniture.Withthe consumption of food, for example, Bourdieuargues that working-class households tend to ensurethat there is ample available for the satisfaction ofhunger.This contrasts with the eating habits of theupper classes who are more interested in treatingfood as an art form.A working-class household wouldnot tend to be impressed by fashions such asnouvelle cuisine, in which the presentation of foodis more important than the quantity on offer. Withfurniture, Bourdieu distinguishes between thefixation the upper classes have for antiques and themore practical requirements of working-class house-holds.And with clothing he argues that working-classhouseholds tend to be less influenced by hautecouture than the upper classes.

In distinguishing between the tastes of indi-viduals, Bourdieu places great emphasis on theirlevel of economic capital. A person of high income,such as a lawyer or industrialist, has a high level of

74 CONSUMPTION

economic capital.An unskilled manual worker has alow level of economic capital.The more economiccapital an individual has, the more able they are todevelop their consumption patterns; the more ablethey are to purchase antiques and designer clothes.

It may or may not follow that a person of higheconomic capital also has high cultural capital. Figure3.4 lays out four possible combinations of cultural andeconomic capital. Each block of the diagram is asso-ciated with different lifestyles. Block A containspeople who have both a high level of income (positiveeconomic capital) and well-developed tastes (positivecultural capital).People such as lawyers and architectscan have both the economic resources for expensivetastes in consumption goods, and the know-how toappreciate legitimate culture.At the other extreme isblock D – the lifestyles associated with workingclasses who have neither economic nor culturalcapital.As we have seen, for Bourdieu the constraintsof economic and cultural capital make it difficult forpeople to move from block D to block A.

The remaining diagonal blocks, blocks B and C,represent the lifestyles of individuals lacking in oneof the two types of capital. In block B individualshave positive economic capital. This could be, say,small business people who make plenty of moneybut who do not show any interest in the arts. BlockC, on the other hand, might include people such asprimary school-teachers who do not earn muchmoney (negative economic capital) but who tire-lessly visit art galleries and attend the theatre.

Over time, there can be cross-mobility betweenblocks B and C.A family with a small business,but lowcultural capital (block B) may channel its resourcesinto purchasing an education for its children whothen develop the lifestyle of block C by moving intoteaching.The shape of the social hierarchy,in terms ofwhich people end up where,depends, in part,on thecultural decisions of its participants.

Having considered the consumption behaviourof different social classes in relation to variousconsumption goods, we can now summarize


Figure 3.3 Photograph of an old woman’s hands

Source: Russell Lee, Hands of Old Homesteader, Iowa (1936); Gelatin-silver print, (16.5 x 24.44 cm).The Museumof Modern Art, New York, Gift of the Farm Security Administration, © 1996,The Museum of Modern Art, NewYork, reproduced in Bourdieu, 1979, p.45

Bourdieu’s theory of distinction.There are two mainparts to this theory.The first part, as we have seen,looks at the way in which individuals invest incultural capital in order to obtain a position in thesocial hierarchy. Indeed the structure of the socialhierarchy itself is shaped by the way in which indi-viduals invest in cultural capital. For Bourdieu, thedrive for distinction is a prime mover in the estab-lishment of social classes.

The second part of the theory looks at the way tastesand preferences depend on membership of social

classes. A working-class person’s preferences may bedominated by functional necessities.This is not to saythat the working classes are not influenced by fashionand culture;only that the need to make ends meet is ofcentral importance. Moving up the social hierarchythese necessities have less influence.As a consequence,the tastes of the middle classes tend to imitate those ofthe upper classes;and the tastes of the upper classes areseen to be the dominant and legitimate tastes of society.

Figure 3.5 summarizes these two ways of seeingthe relationship between tastes and the social

76 CONSUMPTION

Cultural Capital

Eco

no

mic

Cap

ital

+

+

–

–

LifestylesA

LifestylesB

LifestylesC

LifestylesD

Figure 3.4 Bourdieu’s classification of lifestyles

Source: Rosengren, 1995

Positionin socialhierarchy

Tastesand

preferences

Figure 3.5 The relationship between tastes and the social hierarchy

hierarchy. On the one hand, the tastes and prefer-ences of individuals depend on their position inthe social hierarchy, as shown by the right-handarrow.And, on the other hand, the tastes and pref-erences that individuals cultivate help todetermine their position in the social hierarchy (asshown by the left-hand arrow). Whicheverdirection of causation is dominant, the tastes andpreferences of individuals are always dependent.They depend either on the position currently heldin the social hierarchy or on the target social classthat they wish to join. In the neoclassical approach,you simply have your own independent tastes andpreferences; nobody else influences these prefer-ences and you, yourself, have no choice orinfluence over them. For Bourdieu, however, tastesand preferences are determined socially by the wayin which each individual relates to their (current ordesired) position in the social hierarchy. In short,tastes and preferences are endogenous, since theydepend on the way in which individuals relate tothe social hierarchy.

This theory of distinction provides a moregeneral theory of consumption than Veblen’stheory of conspicuous consumption, and hence amore general critique of the neoclassical approach.Set in the context of Bourdieu’s approach,conspicuous consumption represents only oneparticular type of behaviour. Not only are theworking classes not required to emulate theirbetters; it is also possible in Bourdieu’s system formembers of the upper classes to be very incon-spicuous in their consumption. Bourdieu empha-sizes the subtle nuances and distinctions in whichindividuals may or may not require conspicuousdisplays of wealth.This theory is more general thanVeblen’s theory of conspicuous consumption,since it embraces more different types of behav-iour; and, as a consequence, relates to more itemsof consumption than the luxury goods consideredby Veblen.

Bourdieu also improves upon Veblen’s system inhis more sophisticated treatment of economicnecessity.One of the key points of Veblen’s approachis that consumer society produces waste products.This involves a value judgement on Veblen’s part thatsome items of consumption satisfy a need – aneconomic necessity – while others merely satisfysocial vanity. By providing a more general theory ofconsumption than Veblen,Bourdieu provides a moregeneral critique of a consumer society.

6.1 Problems with the theory of‘Distinction’

Although Bourdieu’s approach can be argued to bemore general than that of Veblen, the questionremains whether this is general enough. A number ofcritics have questioned the general validity of theresults from Bordieu’s questionnaire. In particular, ithas been argued that his case study of a sample ofFrench people in the 1960s may be too specificallyFrench. Jenkins (1992, p.148), for example, is ‘lessconvinced than Bourdieu … that the use of Frenchdata does not undermine the general relevance ofthe argument’. Similarly, for Lamont and Lareau(1988, p.158) ‘Bordieu’s model could have beeninfluenced by his context of elaboration, i.e., thesmall and relatively culturally unified Parisian scene’.The argument here is that in France the intellectu-alism which surrounds the cultural elite is veryspecific to France, and does not apply to other coun-tries such as Britain and the United States.

It could be argued that in Britain, Napoleon’s‘nation of shopkeepers’, and in the US,where even a‘B’ movie actor can become president, no suchdominant cultural elite exists. In addition, whereasfor Americans, film actors are their equivalent ofroyalty, the French have a particular reverence forintellectuals:Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoirare as famous in France as Humphrey Bogart andLauren Bacall are in the US. Indeed,Bourdieu himselfis now something of a celebrity in France; his book,Distinction, has sold widely and he is often quotedextensively in French newspapers.

Wacquant (1993), however, has taken particularissue with this viewpoint that Bordieu’s work ispeculiarly French. Supporters of this position, heargues, ‘miss the fact that Bourdieu is uncommonlyinternationalist in intellectual background, outlookand practice’(p.244).Bourdieu’s educational trainingis in German philosophy and in anthropology of theBritish and American tradition. Furthermore, thejournal which Bourdieu edits and in which applica-tions of his approach are published, Actes de laRecherche en Sciences Sociales, is argued to carrymore articles by foreign authors than any othersocial science journal in France.

As for the peculiarly French nature of the datawhich Bourdieu uses in Distinction, Wacquantargues this must be viewed in the context of all of hiswork.Throughout his career, it is argued, Bourdieu’strademark has been to apply his methodology to a


variety of different social settings.From pre-capitalistsocieties to selection procedures in French grammarschools, Bourdieu has not relied on one type ofspecific data.Wacquant states that those who makethis charge are ‘ignoring the extensions, revisions,and corrections he may have made when tacklingsimilar processes and mechanisms in a differentsocial setting’ (p.242). Bourdieu’s approach is,therefore, defended as a method, as a way of inter-preting the behaviour of individuals in differentsocial settings.

For Garnham (1993) however, the general rele-vance of Bourdieu’s method is challenged because itfocuses too much on the relationships between indi-viduals.The problem is that individuals may, indeed,differentiate their behaviour from others, dependingon how they relate to the social hierarchy, but thereare also other powerful influences on theirbehaviour, namely, the various institutions that makeup society.

Garnham argues that one such important insti-tution is television, which people now watch for anaverage of over twenty hours per week. With thisamount of contact with television, Garnham issurprised that it receives so little attention fromBourdieu – there is only one reference to televisionin the index to Distinction. He also tentativelysuggests that Bourdieu’s methodology may not fiteasily with an analysis of television. In particular,Garnham argues that Bourdieu’s notion of adominant class with a dominant culture does notnecessarily apply to television.The work of Barwiseand Ehrenberg (1988) is cited as showing that ‘thereis no evidence that members of the dominant factionof the dominant class watch demanding, minority,“cultural programs”, whereas the popular classeswatch less demanding,lowest-common-denominatorpap’(Garnham,1993,p.188).In Garnham’s view,tele-vision cuts across social classes in a way whichundermines Bourdieu’s class-based approach.

There may, however, be specific televisionprogrammes to which Bourdieu’s approach can beapplied. Bonner and du Gay, for example, usedBourdieu to examine the way in which the char-acters of the American television programmeThirtysomething related to the new ‘yuppie’ class,which emerged in the 1980s. Not only did theprogramme reflect this new social phenomenon, italso helped to shape it. The Sun Alliance insurancecompany, for example, urged people in an adver-tisement to ‘celebrate being 30 something’ by

starting a savings plan (Bonner and du Gay, 1992,p.168). In contrast to Garnham’s approach, Bonnerand du Gay argue that ‘these are changing times forTV schedulers and advertisers who want access tothose with disposable incomes rather than to largeaudiences dominated by the ageing poor as is thecase with the 17 million audience for CoronationStreet, for example’ (p.169). In this view, television isbeginning to reinforce the distinctions betweensocial classes which Bourdieu emphasizes.

Whichever view of television is correct, its role inthe formation of consumer behaviour needs to beconsidered.Moreover,once we take an interest in therole of television, the role of other institutions alsocomes into play. What role, for example, do adver-tising agencies play in the selling of consumerproducts, and, indeed, why do firms, such as SunAlliance, spend so much on advertising theirservices? Do they actively seek to change tastes? Tocontinue our search for a more general theory ofconsumption, we now turn our attention to wantcreation by institutions, especially the role of thefirm in this process.

7 Want creation byinstitutions

An important insight into how firms influenceconsumer behaviour is provided by the Harvardprofessor (and adviser to President John F.Kennedy),John Kenneth Galbraith.The problem for capitalism,as Galbraith sees it, is that we judge its success byproduction. If the output of the UK economy, forexample, fails to grow at its trend rate of 2.2 per centper annum, a downturn is judged to have takenplace; for the economy to be successful, firms mustproduce more each year.

How, it might be asked,can this additional outputbe sold each year in the marketplace? The neoclas-sical theory of consumption assumes that each indi-vidual gets less satisfaction as more of each good Gis consumed. Assume, by way of an example, thatgood G is bread. Galbraith argues that as westerneconomies become more affluent, bread becomesabundant in supply. In Europe there is a grainmountain which suggests that there is no shortageof the main ingredient used to make bread. Indeed,bread can be bought relatively cheaply since it is a

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lead good which supermarkets tend to pricecompetitively. It follows that there is not much roomfor increased sales of bread.

So where is the 2.2 per cent increase in sales ofgoods to come from? Galbraith argues that firmscreate new wants in consumers by introducing newproducts to the marketplace. Key to this process arethe techniques of marketing and advertising.A goodexample is provided by brand-name bottles of water,such as Evian and Perrier. It is still every traveller’sright in Britain to be given a free glass of water onvisiting an inn or public house.The breweries havenow managed,however,to sell water in bottles underthese brand-names. Consumers now spend moneyon a product which,at one time,did not exist.

This process of want creation is continually at workas firms invent more and more products with which totempt the consumer. In Galbraith’s view the neoclas-sical theory of consumption breaks down here becauseit is firms that create wants. ‘One cannot defendproduction as satisfying wants if that productioncreates wants’ (Galbraith, 1958, p.148). Galbraith ques-tions the validity of this consumer bonanza:

‘Were it so that a man on arising eachmorning was assailed by demons whichinstilled in him a passion sometimes for silkshirts, sometimes for kitchenware, sometimesfor chamber-pots, and sometimes for orangesquash, there would be every reason toapplaud the effort to find the goods, howeverodd, that quenched this flame. But should it bethat his passion was the result of his firsthaving cultivated the demons, and should italso be that his effort to allay it stirred thedemons to even greater and greater effort,there would be question as to how rationalwas his solution. Unless restrained byconventional attitudes, he might wonder if thesolution lay with more goods or fewer demons.’

(Galbraith, 1958, p.148)

Galbraith views the process of creating wants asanalogous to a squirrel on a treadmill.The more thesquirrel (or the supposedly sovereign consumer)

propels the wheel, the faster it goes.The squirrel isrunning faster and faster to stay in the same place.

The key problem with this process of wantcreation is that consumption is divorced from need.It does not matter for the firm whether the consumerneeds to buy a product, only that the consumer willbuy it. For Galbraith it is difficult to establish thatthere is an urgent need for a product, if, previously,the consumer never even knew about it. This ideapicks up from Veblen’s notion that conspicuousconsumption is a wasteful activity. Wedgwood sawthat people did not buy his pottery for the use theygained from it – consumption did not derive fromneed. This is a value judgement which Veblen,Bourdieu and Galbraith make about whether or not aproduct is useful.

By focusing specifically on the role of firms ininfluencing consumer behaviour, Galbraith’sapproach can be seen as providing an additionaldimension to the other approaches that have beendiscussed in this chapter. The behaviour ofconsumers depends not only on the way in whichthey relate to other individuals, but also on the roleof the firm in its advertising and marketing activities.

It should be noted, however, that those whowork in the field of marketing do not tend to agreewith Galbraith’s arguments. In most marketing text-books, consumption is argued to derive from theneeds of consumers. Kotler et al. (1996) forexample, in their Principles of Marketing, state that‘the most basic concept underlying marketing isthat of human needs’ (p.7). In particular, it is oftenargued that consumers have latent needs – needs ofwhich the consumer is not yet conscious, butwhich are lurking in the background.Thus it may bethe case that new consumer goods satisfy a wholerange of latent needs.


Want creation

The shaping by firms of new desires for consumerproducts.

TThhee ddeeppeennddeenntt ccoonnssuummeerr

Refrigerators and washing machines, which arerelatively recent consumer goods, may satisfy thelatent needs to store food efficiently and to cleanclothing more easily. Similarly, cars satisfy the latentneed to travel.Although people may not have had aneed for these particular consumer goods before theywere invented, they could arguably have had a latentneed for the attributes of these goods. Sharpe arguesthat in the past,before these goods were invented:

‘… people needed to eat, wash clothes andmove from one place to another. Given theremoval of much of the population fromfarms, the desire of women to be free fromthe household drudgery of washing clothes byhand, and the increasing sprawl of towns andsuburbs, the refrigerator, washing machineand automobile seem natural and logicalchoices of consumers, requiring an assistfrom advertising only to familiarize themwith the possibilities and jar them out of setpatterns of habit.’

(Sharpe, 1973, p.31)

The problem, which Galbraith underestimates, isthat launching new products involves great risks.Indeed, Galbraith himself cites the case of a failedmotor car, the Edsel, ‘as a case in point where a firmmade losses because it incorrectly judged the demands(real and potential) of consumers’ (Reisman, 1980,p.94). In order to minimize these risks, firms carry outmarket research to find out whether products relate toconsumer needs. Information is gathered about howconsumers might react to a new product.

For Reisman, this demonstrates that consumersare sovereign: ‘Market research may be seen as no

more than an attempt to forecast (in order to satisfy)the future desires of sovereign consumers’ (p.96).This contrasts with Galbraith’s interpretation ofmarket research, in which market research is seen asdiscovering what consumers can be cajoled intowanting. Galbraith argues that instead of consumersovereignty there is producer sovereignty – that it isthe producers, not the consumers, who decide whatis produced.

Sharpe argues that both the consumer sover-eignty and the producer sovereignty positions areperhaps exaggerated, and that there may be sometruth in both. It may be the case that consumersdesire even the most seemingly frivolous consumergoods according to their latent needs and, at thesame time, it may also be the case that firmsinfluence those desires. Firms may carry out marketresearch to find out the needs of consumers;but theyspend a great deal of money on advertisingcampaigns to influence, and to some extent manip-ulate, the desires of consumers. ‘Consumer sover-eignty might best be regarded as a doctrine of limitedmonarchy rather than divine right,with the producerin the role of a very persuasive prime minister’(Sharpe,1973,p.32).

Taking into account these arguments, the modelof consumer behaviour which was developed in theprevious section,based on the work of Bourdieu,canbe further generalized. Figure 3.6 represents anexpanded version of Figure 3.5.

Not only are the interrelationships betweentastes and preferences with the social hierarchytaken into account – as developed in Bourdieu’stheory of distinction.This more general model alsotakes into account the relationship between firmsand the tastes and preferences of consumers. Thedirection of causation runs in both directions. Firmscan both influence, and be influenced by, thesetastes and preferences.

8 Conclusions

Using the work of Thorstein Veblen as a startingpoint, this chapter has provided a critique of theneoclassical theory of consumption. In Veblen’sview, people engage in conspicuous consumption,their inclination being to buy expensive luxurygoods in order to demonstrate wealth and prosperity

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Latent needs

Desires not yet exhibited or expressed forconsumer products.

Question

Identify any latent needs which the followingconsumer goods might satisfy:

� refrigerators� cars� washing machines.

to others.Unlike the neoclassical approach, in whichthe preferences of individuals are exogenous to themodel and are independent of prices,Veblen arguesthat preferences depend on prices. Instead ofconsumers being sovereign in the market economy,they are dependent. Preferences are not exogenousto the market – they are endogenous, dependentupon the market. Instead of consumer sovereigntythere is consumer dependency.

Two case studies have been considered as illustra-tions of conspicuous consumption.The first reviewedthe argument that Josiah Wedgwood pioneered aconsumer revolution in pottery by encouragingconsumers to emulate the consumption behaviour ofthe English aristocracy. In the second, conspicuousconsumption was evidenced by the exorbitant pricesof luxury goods sold on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore in Paris. As well as illustrating Veblen’scritique of neoclassical theory, these case studies alsoprovide the basis for a critique of consumer society.Since luxury goods are only bought for purposes ofdisplay their practical usefulness is not important.ForVeblen, consumer society is characterized by wasteand frivolity.

While both these case studies provide good illus-trations of how conspicuous consumption can work,the chapter has also discussed the limitations of thetheory.In particular,it could be argued that it is impos-sible to generalize such examples of conspicuousconsumption to the economy as a whole. It would bedifficult, for example, to explain the consumption of

coal as a vehicle for conspicuous consumption. Somecredence has been given to the neoclassical view-point that luxury goods may represent exceptions tothe general neoclassical story in which preferencesare exogenous.

In order to develop a more general alternative tothe neoclassical approach, the chapter has alsoconsidered the work of Pierre Bourdieu. Instead ofemulating the behaviour of others, Bourdieu arguesthat consumers try to distinguish their tastes fromthat which is popular. They engage in distinction.This type of behaviour is not restricted to theconsumption of luxury goods – Bourdieu relates it toa whole range of goods and services.

The search for distinction provides the driving forcebehind the evolution of social classes as it provides theentry requirement for membership of the upperclasses. At the same time, the structure of the socialhierarchy determines the tastes of consumers.Bourdieudevelops a two-way model in which structure deter-mines tastes and tastes determine structure. Thisprovides a more general critique of the neoclassicalapproach in which tastes determine consumptionpatterns.In Bourdieu’s view,tastes are not independentof,nor exogenous to, the model, they are endogenous,depending upon how the consumer relates to thesocial hierarchy.This model also represents a critique ofconsumer society,since the whole basis of distinction isto differentiate behaviour from that which is necessaryand practical. Following Veblen, Bourdieu argues thatsome consumption is wasteful.


Positionin socialhierarchy

Tastesand

preferences

Firms

Figure 3.6 A more general model of consumption

In discussing Bourdieu, two main issues have beenconsidered. First, there is the question of whetherBourdieu’s approach is peculiarly French, an issuewhich has not been fully resolved in the literature.Second, there is the criticism that Bourdieu does nottake into account the important role which institutionsplay in the formation of consumer preferences.Thislatter deficiency has been addressed by considering theapproach taken by John Kenneth Galbraith which alsopicks up on the notion that consumers are dependenton firms. With their sophisticated advertising andmarketing operations,firms are able to shape the tastesof consumers. In keeping with Veblen and Bourdieu,this approach also represents a critique of consumersociety in which firms generate wasteful growth whichdoes not relate to the needs of individuals.

By taking Galbraith’s approach into consider-ation, alongside some of the arguments made in themarketing literature, that the goods which firmsproduce are shaped by the tastes of consumers, aneven more general theory of consumption has beensuggested. In the same way that Bourdieu develops atwo-way relationship between the social hierarchyand consumer tastes, a two-way model of the rela-tionship between firms and consumers’ tastes issuggested. In principle this model can be integratedwith Bourdieu’s framework to provide an even moregeneral theory of consumption.

It should be emphasized that if this more generalapproach is accepted,then this is not simply a matterof adding other factors to the neoclassical view ofconsumer theory – it entirely undermines the wholestructure and nature of its explanation. By taking aninterdisciplinary approach, in which the social rela-tionships between individuals and institutions areconsidered, an alternative to the neoclassical theoryof consumption is developed. Indeed,you may recallfrom Chapter 1,that these provide some of the ingre-dients of institutional economics. This chapter hasdeveloped both an institutional critique of theneoclassical approach and an alternate conceptualframework for the theory of consumption.

This chapter has focused on only one specific typeof social division – that of social class – and mainly onetype of institution,the firm.Once consumption is seenas a social relationship there are,of course,many othertypes of divisions, such as gender and race, anddifferent types of institutions such as schools andhouseholds.This chapter should be seen as just onepossible starting point for investigating an institutionalapproach to consumption.

Further Reading

Bourdieu,P. (1979) Distinction:a Social Critique ofthe Judgement of Taste, London,Routledge(English translation,1984): this will make youquestion everything you ever thought about tasteand consumption.

Burrows,R.and Marsh,C. (eds) (1992)Consumption and Class, London,Macmillan:acollection of articles which contain a goodoverview of the literature on the relationshipbetween consumption and class.

Calhoun,C.,LiPuma,E.and Postone,M. (eds) (1993)Bourdieu:Critical Perspectives, Cambridge,Polity Press: a good insight into the literature onBourdieu’s work.

Fine,B.and Leopold,E. (1993) The World ofConsumption, London,Routledge:a compre-hensive survey of the vast literature onconsumption; it also contains a critique ofconspicuous consumption.

Galbraith, J.K. (1950) The Affluent Society,Harmondsworth,Penguin: still stands as a vibrantcritique of the theory of consumer society.

Kotler,P., Armstrong,G.,Saunders, J. and Wong,V.(1996) Principles of Marketing,HemelHempstead,Prentice Hall Europe:argues thatconsumption is based upon the needs ofconsumers.

Veblen,T. (1889) The Theory of the Leisure Class,New York,Dover (1994): the classic on the insti-tutional approach to consumption.

Answers to Exercises

Exercise 3.1

1 The Double Cello Quintet Schubert2 The Apassionata Beethoven3 Pictures from an Exhibition Mussorgsky4 The Messiah Handel5 The Ring Cycle Wagner6 St Matthew Passion J.S.Bach7 Tales from the Vienna Woods Johan Strauss8 The Hebrides Suite Mendelssoh9 Coppelia Delibes

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10 From the New World Dvorak11 The London Symphony J.Haydn12 Les Sylphides Chopin13 The 1812 Overture Tchaikovsky14 Enigma Variations Elgar15 Peer Gynt Grieg

Exercise 3.2

1 A Clockwork Orange Stanley Kubrik2 Lawrence of Arabia David Lean3 JFK Oliver Stone4 ET Steven Spielberg5 On the Waterfront Elia Kazan6 Pulp Fiction Quentin Tarantino

7 Hannah and Her Sisters Woody Allen8 Citizen Kane Orson Welles9 The Maltese Falcon John Huston

10 The Third Man Carol Reed11 North by Northwest Alfred Hitchcock12 Persona Ingmar Bergman13 Stagecoach John Ford14 Fantasia Walt Disney15 Malcolm X Spike Lee16 La Grande Illusion Jean Renoir17 Land and Freedom Ken Loach18 Little Man Tate Jodie Foster19 Braveheart Mel Gibson20 Gone With The Wind Victor Fleming

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Transcript of Consumer Dependency 3 - Cengage EMEAcws.cengage.co.uk/himmelweit/ch03.pdf · 2005. 6. 10. · In...