 Still Life (1939), watercolor by Earl Horter, born Philadelphia, PA, 1881 - died Philadelphia, PA, 1940. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Record ID saam_1969.75 [Public Domain] Conspicuous consumption is a term introduced by American institutional economist Thorstein Veblen. Veblen is best known for the book Theory of the Leisure Class - An Economic Study of Institutions (1899) and for the so-called “Veblen goods” - a term used in microeconomics textbooks to denote luxury goods whose demand increases with significantly higher prices, thereby recognizing status as a factor in demand and exclusivity as a form of consumption. But it is worth going beyond luxury goods and services to discuss conspicuous consumption as a social process within hierarchical economies. Veblen’s concept of conspicuous consumption was part of his overall theory of capitalist development and, furthermore, of the cultural transformation accompanying the emergence of economies based on social surplus – the ability to produce beyond immediate consumption needs and to organize economic hierarchies. In this understanding, conspicuous consumption is a historical social process, not merely an individual behavioral choice or an idiosyncratic deviation from the “law of demand” (which states that, everything else equal, when the price of a good decreases its quantity demanded increases, and vice versa). Prices carry information and individual choices of given goods are important, but conceptually and empirically, these offer only a surface-level, narrow view of economic dynamics. 1. The Bases of Conspicuous Consumption At the very bases of conspicuous consumption are: 1) the historical processes of distinction between industry and exploit (getting something for nothing), and 2) the invidious distinction among groups of people. First, the ability to exploit others and resources without engaging directly in industry (labor) ensures high social status, and exclusive, wasteful consumption displays that status. While industry provides the means for conspicuous consumption, exploit makes it exclusive. The status attributes of goods are linked to the emulation of exploit. The most exclusive goods convey the greatest ability to practice some form of exploit to a greater degree. Second, the distinction between exploit and industry is an “invidious” distinction among groups of people. “Invidious” means based on a hierarchy of dominance and superiority, degrees of hostility, and even aggression. Ultimately, these are mostly linked to ideological status rather than to social valuation based on industrial contributions. Conspicuous consumption is a result of invidious distinction, promoting domination and a supremacy ethos in human relations. 2. Elements of Conspicuous Consumption The two main attributes of any consumption good or service are only a starting point for thinking about conspicuous consumption: 1) serviceability or usability, and 2) status or symbolism. For cars, for example, means of transportation and fuel efficiency are mobility-related serviceability attributes, while brand and exclusivity are status-related attributes. Similarly, nutritional indicators are the serviceability attributes of food. These two groups of attributes are not always clear-cut. Goods convey meaning that is not only about status but also includes political and cultural meaning. Serviceability indicators can also become part of the status attributes associated with higher-quality goods and social class. However, for more expensive or complex items, such as cars, status attributes significantly outweigh any consideration of industrial performance indicators. The status side of consumption goods attributes includes expensiveness, novelty, heirloom status, or potential for intergenerational possession; and ineptitude for industrial purposes, or remoteness from practical use. 2.1.Exclusivity Expensiveness secures exclusivity. This is to be distinguished from affordability and from the expensiveness encountered in deprivation. Difficulties in accessing basic needs like food and housing are not experienced as luxury consumption once food and shelter are obtained. They are experienced as alleviation of deprivation. Expensiveness is not just about exclusive luxury goods. It involves some form of seclusion, surveillance, and guard labor, all of which we can call gated consumption. These arrangements of expensiveness ensure degrees of exclusivity and protection from unsorted social interaction, as well as social oversight, in addition to the consumption of luxury goods and services. 2.2.Novelty The novelty attribute is tied to qualitative exclusivity and originality, which ensure distinction. This attribute is important because emulation occurs across income groups and social classes, and technological change enables mass production and consumption as part of capital accumulation. All social groups and income classes engage in emulation of the next achievable consumption pattern of status. While everybody strives for some originality and seeks novelty in consumption, the most exclusive consumption must continually evolve to remain distinct from the majority of consumption habits. This top-level consumption might incorporate mass elements, mass cultural significations, or even industrial elements that the masses have sought to reduce in their unattainable effort to emulate the leisure class. 2.3.Heilroom Possession The heirloom intergenerational possession is essential because conspicuous consumption at the end is tied to wealth accumulation, and wealth can be passed through generations; the heirloom's potential is something to emulate and a status marker. This aspect also relates to the familial dimensions of consumption and wealth transmission, the familial boundaries of opportunity and ownership, and the conservative features of the leisure class. The leisure class exhibits both a heirloom-like conservatism in the generational transmission of wealth within familial boundaries and novelty and originality in its methods of conspicuous consumption. 2.4.Industrial Ineptitude Finally, the ineptitude attribute of conspicuous consumption points to its roots in the assignment of greater social reputability to remoteness from industry and drudgery. The ability to consume on a large scale and with a high degree of exclusivity, while demonstrating that matters of industry are secondary or unimportant, is central to conspicuous consumption. Veblen used the corset dress of women of the leisure class as a case in point. Importantly, Veblen clearly linked this attribute to the socio-economic status of this class of women as trophies. It is important to stress that Veblen also roots the “ineptitude” attribute of conspicuous consumption in the origins of surplus and ownership, including the capture and ownership of people, particularly women, and in the gendered division of labor that emerges from this. Furthermore, he discussed what he saw as a progressive institutional change in the women’s movement for equality, including in education, as a way to move away from the conservatism of invidious distinctions that underlie gender inequality. *** So, the elements of conspicuous consumption discussed point to a broader meaning of the concept that includes relations of hierarchy and concerns about equality. 3.Other Dimensions of Conspicuous Consumption Conspicuous consumption is a social process with multiple dimensions, not just the purchase of exclusive goods and services. These include: conspicuous waste; conspicuous leisure; vicarious leisure and consumption; pecuniary standards of beauty; and even predation. 3.1.Conspicuous Waste Conspicuous consumption entails conspicuous waste through the sheer use of resources, either in excess or in ways that significantly deviate from “industrial” or serviceable use. Veblen used the term “waste” because these activities and expenditures do not serve human life and well-being on a macro scale. The concept of conspicuous waste applies to the command over labor that provides concierge services. This includes the emergence and transformation of servants, which connotes hierarchies of status. Further conspicuous waste also includes commanding labor that organizes and produces conspicuous activities. Shooting rockets into the stratosphere, with millionaires and celebrities, and calling them astronauts, fits the description of conspicuous waste. Conspicuous waste also applies to the consumption of time away from economic purposes and beyond what is sufficient for recreation. This leads us to conspicuous leisure and vicarious leisure. 3.2.Conspicuous Leisure Leisure is a fundamentally necessary human activity that maintains human lives. Conspicuous leisure goes beyond that in the direction of conveying status and command of time away from economic concerns in an excessive manner and significant exclusivity. All conspicuous consumption involves consumption activities and the cultivation of knowledge about the products and tastes. Those entail time for cultivation and participation in conspicuous activities on a scale way beyond recreation, and they involve more than learning curiosity but controlled, or gated, conspicuous leisure. 3.3.Vicarious Leisure and Consumption The ability to maintain dependents and servants for an elaborate lifestyle and specialized tasks enhances conspicuous consumption, as it is not just the wealthy individual’s consumption but also their vicarious, conspicuous leisure and consumption through their dependents, who are in economically dependent and subordinate positions. While the wealthiest families can display even more ostentatious leisure and consumption through their dependents, those who must actively engage in business and work can only use vicarious leisure and consumption to attain industrial status as good providers, with standards of living that confer social reputability. 3.4. Pecuniary Standards of Living and Emulation Consumption beyond basic needs and sufficiency is part of striving to meet evolving, societally and technologically driven standards and the associated norms of reputability. Emulation of the upper classes is central to this process. In that sense, conspicuous consumption is evident at all income and wealth levels and is routine or habitual rather than driven by irrational exuberance. However, ultimately, the standards of reputability are driven by the conspicuous waste ushered by the leisure class and the wealthiest groups. For this reason, Veblen speaks of “pecuniary” standards of living, as these are not living standards based on indicators of physical and emotional comfort that preoccupy most of the population, but rather on comparisons of pecuniary strength secured by concentrated ownership. 3.5. Pecuniary Tastes of Beauty These pecuniary standards affect aspects of life and relations beyond direct consumption, including a sense of merit, social worth, the sacredness of ownership above all, and a sense of beauty. In addition to aesthetic form, symmetry, color, and light, expensiveness adds another dimension of beauty - pecuniary aesthetics. This is readily observed in markets for rare gemstones, exclusive jewelry, high fashion, and luxury cars. However, it also pertains to the organization of private grounds and public spaces. In addition to intrinsic aesthetics and functionality, the habit of maintaining grounds that are clearly uneconomical at different scales has become part of pecuniary aesthetics. Furthermore, there are pecuniary standards of beauty regarding people. Beyond health and autonomy, beauty standards are pursued for social confirmation and promoted to expand markets. This fitting in is linked to economic opportunities and greater chances of attaining personal affections and security. Historically, economic opportunities have largely been influenced or dispensed by men (i.e., patriarchy). Over time, that has affected beauty standards and the behavior expected of women. Even with greater gender equality, this historically rooted economic power persists today due to socialization, enhanced by technology and markets. 3.6.Invidious Distinction and Dreaming of Conservatism Equality and democratization are threatening and trigger a conservative response. Particularly, gender equality threatens some men, and this can be used to bring harm. One level where this threat is expressed is the misogyny promoted by the online “manosphere.” The manosphere diverts attention from societal wealth distribution, collaboration, and the improvement of democracy. Its profit-bearing actions of invidious distinction feed toxic “masculinity” to men who sense their ownership subordination in the economic order. Yet instead of being concerned about wealth concentration, skewed income distribution, and threats to democracy, these men are driven to imagine gaining power through subordinating women, in place of conspicuous consumption prowess. 3.7. Predation in Conspicuous Consumption Meanwhile, wealthy men engage in predatory behavior as part of their conspicuous consumption. They can treat women, children, and people generally as commodities to be consumed and experienced. Ultimately, access to large wealth allows those predisposed to predatory proclivities to treat people as goods and services, alongside their conspicuous consumption and leisure. Vulnerable positions and economic power expose people to this treatment, in which they are depersonalized and trafficked, becoming part of the process of conspicuous consumption and ultimate conspicuous waste. Technological advances, driven also by conspicuous waste, are diligently on track to offer a person-like subordinate commodity, minus the health and mental concerns of an individual. Perhaps this is the ideal type for (wealth) predators and for subordination-conservatism dreamers alike. *** Conspicuous consumption, as Veblen and institutional economics analyze it, is not about irrational consumer choices and luxuries; it is about the preservation of hierarchies and domination and about interpersonal relations of subordination. When the scope of conspicuous consumption is narrowed to luxuries and individual choices, we can easily omit discussion of labor and the commodity-like treatment of people in this social process. Cite this Blog: Zdravka Todorova. April 29, 2026. “Conspicuous Consumption: It is More than Luxuries.” www.ztodorova.net Sources Economic Policy Institute. “Rising Inequality is the Root of Affordability Problems,” April 26, 2026. Ezra Klein Podcast. “The Infrastructure of Jeffrey Epstein Power.” New York Times, Feb. 13, 2026. Kathy Peiss. “On Beauty… and the History of Business.” Enterprise & Society, Vol. 1, No. 3, September 2000, pp. 485-506. London Review of Books Podcast. “Selling the Manosphere,” September 10, 2025. Zdravka Todorova. “Invidious Distinction and Economies.” Blog: www.ztodorova.net, March 14, 2026. ______________. “Consumption as a Social Process,” Journal of Economic Issues 48 (3): 663-79, 2014. ______________. “Conspicuous Consumption as Routine Expenditures and its Role in Social Provisioning.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 72 (5): 1183 – 1204, 2013. Most Relevant Writings by Thorstein Veblen: “The Economic Theory of Women’s Dress.” Popular Science Monthly, December 1894, vol. 2, 198-205. “The Beginning of Ownership.” The American Journal of Sociology, November 1898, vol. 4, pp. 352-65. The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions. 1899. “The Barbarian Status of Women.” American Journal of Sociology, January 1899, volume 4, pp. 503-14.  Comments are closed.
|
Zdravka Todorova
I research, teach, and write about systems, processes, and relations of economic lives. Archives
April 2026
Categories
|
RSS Feed
