Conspicuous Consumption

Definition

Conspicuous consumption names the display-practice of consuming for what the act shows rather than what the object does — establishing, through display, "a distinctive hierarchy of taste, status, and identity" (Tang, p. 331). The terms "conspicuous consumer," "conspicuous consumption" and "invidious distinction" are the classic vocabulary of Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) — external wiki context, not a Tang citation (Tang does not name Veblen; the wiki's Veblen lineage otherwise enters through Lawrence's manifest-and-latent-functions frame). In this wiki the concept's sharpest statement is Tang's twist: consumption staged for the consumer himself. Throughout He Dun's novella Heping demonstrates to others "what he likes and can afford"; the redecorated apartment is "effectively the first time that… he gets to view his own wealth and accomplishment splendidly displayed for his consumption alone. In a sense, he is now invited to read the sign of his own success rather than parade it around as an invidious distinction" (p. 330) — conspicuous consumption turning in upon its performer, display addressed to the self.

Key Thinkers

• Xiaobing Tang — the concept's literary witness and its twist: Heping as "conspicuous consumer, for whom consumption is more of a practiced ideology than a satisfaction of whimsical needs" (p. 330); the self-addressed display of the four-star-hotel apartment.
• Jean Baudrillard — the theoretical frame Tang quotes: "display and conspicuous consumption" establishing the differential hierarchy (p. 331); the "mechanism of discrimination and prestige" (p. 331).
• Roderick J. Lawrence — the functionalist frame: household possessions' latent functions "in the sense used by Veblen" (p. 184; see manifest-and-latent-functions) — the micro-mechanism Tang's novella dramatizes.
• Pierre Bourdieu — the class theory: distinction as misrecognized symbolic capital (see symbolic-capital).

Related Concepts

• Sign Value — what conspicuous consumption displays: the explicit sign value of commodities.
• Symbolic Capital — the Bourdieusian counterpart: distinction as misrecognized capital.
• Fashion — the display's tempo and instrument: "costly designer attire," brand progressions (p. 330).
• Respectability — the class-limit contrast: Madigan & Munro's modest-income households answering consumption's judgment with moral standards, not display.
• Manifest and Latent Functions — the frame in which consumption exceeds need: the latent functions of "acquisition, accumulation and consumption" (Veblen via Lawrence).
• Consumerism — the social condition of the practice.
• Taste — the hierarchy's judging instrument.
• Interior as Biography — the display's medium: the decorated room as the occupant's involuntary evidence — here, designed to be read by its owner.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• The System of Objects (Baudrillard 1968) — consumption's sign-theoretical restatement: the code of status as "a universal system for the identification of social rank"; "objects work as categories of objects which, in the most tyrannical fashion, define categories of people"; and the model/series ladder as the arena of display — against Veblen's own-account.
• Decorating Culture (Tang 1998/2006) — the concept's literary statement and its display-for-oneself twist (pp. 330–331); the brand progressions (cigarettes, shoes, motorcycle) as the practice's worked example; "deliberate display" as the renovation scene's foreground.
• Social, Spatial and Temporal Factors (Lawrence 1987/2006) — the Veblen-lineage frame: manifest functions under-accounting for "the prevailing pattern of domestic consumption" (p. 184).
• 'House Beautiful' (Madigan & Munro 1996/2006) — the empirical limit: households for whom lifestyle display is "severely restricted by considerations of cost and utility" (p. 224) — conspicuous consumption's class distribution.
• Woman's Domestic Body (Gordon 1996/2006) — the practice's gendered origin: elaborate dress "demonstrat[ing] the prosperity that the men they were associated with had achieved" (pp. 129–131); body and dwelling "adorned to testify to his success."
• The Role of Consumerism in American Architecture (Chase 1991) — the building-scale form: consumerist architecture communicating "direct, rather than abstract, symbolism."
• Domestic Doyennes: Purveyors of Atmospheres Spoken and Visual (Turpin 2003/2006) — the practice's Victorian room-scale form and its moral economy: "the extreme opulence and extravagance" of the Victorian drawing room, justified "by invoking the idea of social duty" — display defended as duty, with self-imposed restrictions "to soothe guilt" ("Ironically, such 'sins' were acceptable for women, but not for the men," p. 371); and the display's audience-side: Mentmore's choreography of being seen ("After a momentary glance from other participants, the primary function of the guest had been accomplished. They were seen," p. 372) — consumption displayed in a room engineered so the eye "is never permitted to rest," display completed in the momentary glance. Where Tang's display is self-addressed and Gordon's is addressed "to the world at large," Turpin's Victorian display is addressed to a glance — the minimal unit of recognition, and the source of "unintended meanings" the room cannot control. See respectability, interior-as-biography, drawing-room.
• Jean Baudrillard: The Defence of the Real (Butler 1999) — the book-length secondary study that reads Baudrillard "in his own terms": the paradox of the sign (paradox-of-the-sign), simulation as the realization rather than the loss of the real (simulation-hyperreality), seduction as the limit to simulation, and the doubling power of theory (doubling, the-real, double-strategy).

Open Questions

• The self-addressed variant. Display "for his consumption alone" (p. 330): is reading one's own success a transient scene of the first private-home generation (Tang's 1992 Changsha) or a structural stage of consumer culture — the consumer as his own audience? Compare Gordon's display-front, which is always addressed "to the world at large."
• Veblen's unnamed presence. Tang uses the vocabulary without naming Veblen; Lawrence names him. Does the wiki need a Veblen page to carry the lineage, or does manifest-and-latent-functions carry it? (Currently: no page — see log.)
• Ideology or whim. "consumption is more of a practiced ideology than a satisfaction of whimsical needs" (p. 330) — does the practiced-ideology thesis resolve the wiki's dupes-vs-players tension, or only relocate it (who practices the ideology — the consumer or the system)? See consumerism, ideology.
• Motorcycle symbolism. "The symbolism of having Dandan thrown off Heping's powerful motorcycle and crushed to death is too strong to ignore" (p. 333) — the vehicle of display becoming the agent of devastation: is the novella's moral that conspicuous consumption destroys what it should shelter? See injured-interiority.