Just a moment...
journals.sagepub.comSaved by Danielle Vermeer
Just a moment...
Given that everyone can now buy designer handbags and new cars, the rich have taken to using much more tacit signifiers of their social position.
bbc • The new, subtle ways the rich signal their wealth
The displays of this “leisure class” were often attempts to outdo one another in a never-ending show of wealth, or “pecuniary emulation”; beneath this extravagance, however, lay deep anxieties about the uncertainty of their status relative to the titled, aristocratic elite.
Ashley Mears • Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit
But today, because material goods have become a noisier signal of one’s social position and economic resources, the affluent have decoupled social status from goods, and re-attached it to beliefs.