A very expensive ordinary life
Consumption, symbolic boundaries and moral legitimacy among New York elites1
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4237471 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Rachel Sherman (0000-0002-2241-4277, New School for Social Research, Manhattan, New York City, NY, USA, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 411-433 |
| Publication date | 2018-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Socio-Economic Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1475-1461 • E-ISSN: 1475-147X |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/ser/mwy011 |
| OpenAlex | W2803008723 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 52 |
| References cited | 60 |
Scholarship on elites, including on their consumption, tends to focus primarily on social closure and the pursuit of social advantage. Research has therefore not investigated the meanings and morality of elites’ lifestyle choices, particularly from the perspective of the wealthy themselves. Yet understanding this lived experience is critical to understanding the cultural dimensions of inequality. This article draws primarily on in-depth interviews with 50 affluent New Yorkers to analyze their spending practices, discourses and conflicts. My respondents worked hard to frame their consumer choices as meeting reasonable, ‘normal’ needs, representing their consumption as basic, family-oriented and prudent, and drawing explicit symbolic boundaries against ostentation, materialism and excess. I argue that these discourses illuminate their struggles to feel morally worthy of privilege, and expand our understanding of a cultural vocabulary of legitimate entitlement in the USA, to include consumption as well as hard work. Furthermore, these discourses illuminate symbolic boundaries that are incongruous with social boundaries, as they appeal to middle-class symbolism. By theorizing consumption discourse as a site of legitimation as well as exclusion for elites, the article highlights another mechanism by which extreme inequality is made acceptable.
Consumption (sociology) · Entitlement (fair division) · Legitimacy · Legitimation · Misrepresentation · Political science · Politics · Privilege (computing) · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · Cultural Industries and Urban Development · Gender Studies · Law · Social and Cultural Dynamics
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Children’s perception of social boundaries
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Beyond Distinction
Omnivorousness and openness
Religious Conservatism versus Elite Professionalism
The hyperopia of wealth
The gender of inheritance in an upper-class family network
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The price of 'golden' exploitation
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New forms of distinction
The art of (self)legitimization
Anxieties of Entitlement
Lucky Me
Practices of Consumption
The winners of marketisation
The long reach of class origin on financial investments and net worth
Gender in the Elite
Outsiders on the inside
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Privilege
Pedigree
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Unequal Childhoods
Longing and Belonging
Symbolic Boundaries
Money, Morals, and Manners
The Dignity of Working Men
Working-Class Heroes
Women of the upper class
Coming Up Short
Driving after Class
The Sociology of Elite Distinction
Cut Adrift
Geographies of the Super-Rich
The Moral Significance of Class
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What good are interviews for thinking about culture? Demystifying interpretive analysis
Conflicted cultivation
The American Dream and the Power of Wealth
Wealth Whiteness and the Matrix of Privilege
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Distinction in America? Recovering Bourdieu's theory of tastes from its critics
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Boundary processes
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Disgusted Subjects
Cultural Capital
Highbrow Cultural Consumption and Class Distinction in Italy, Israel, West Germany, Sweden, and the United States
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Talk Is Cheap
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Elitist Egalitarianism
Becoming Middle Class
Beyond Consciousness
Unpacking 'Class Ambivalence
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The Sociology of Elites
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Globalizing forms of elite sociability
Ordinary, Ambivalent and Defensive
| Unique citing works | 52 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 7,43 |
| Citation span | 2019 - 2026 (8) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 50 |