Sara S
06-20-2011, 07:17 AM
from delancyplace.com:
In today's excerpt - in the 1980s, "conspicuous consumption" reached the middle
class, as middle class consumers began to leave behind the practical but seemingly
dated habits of their parents - embodied by Sears and McDonalds - and traded them
for consumption that they believed would display their uniqueness and authenticity
- buying Evian water and Starbucks coffee. But it was a mass-produced uniqueness
and a fake authenticity:
"For much of the postwar era, the broad, somewhat undifferentiated American middle
class found itself sandwiched between the rich on top and the working-class below
them, with the poor even further below them. Most of these accountants and account
executives, furniture store-owners and doctors shared a common commitment to modesty
and thrift. The rich might show off and spend wildly, but the middle class demonstrated
its sensible frugality by buying convenient and useful items. That didn't mean that
they didn't occasionally splurge on a chrome-trimmed car or a cashmere sweater with
a mink collar or chicken cordon bleu at a French restaurant. But these weren't everyday
things.
"Perhaps no company embodied the consumer ideals of the staid organization men and
steady housewives more than Sears. The Chicago retail giant offered reliable products
at reasonable prices. Good stuff and good value attracted the cautious middle class
who cared more about how long things lasted or how convenient they were than how
they looked. In many middling social circles, the ability to sniff out a deal translated
into social standing and respect. But the same deals that brought the middle classes
to Sears, and then to McDonald's, and later to Wal-Mart, also attracted working
people and the poor. Laborers and the even less well-off went to these places because
they had to; saving a few dollars on cereal, batteries, and paper towels left more
money for clothes, carpeting, and cars. Yet at the upper edges of the middle class,
people with no financial worries didn't want to look, act, or consume like the poor
or the ordinary.
"Looking for ways to distinguish themselves - to broadcast their wealth, know-how,
and sophistication, all key markers of status as the twentieth century drew to a
close - the upper reaches of the middle class developed new consumption patterns
in the 1980s, as Starbucks started to take off. Mostly they looked for luxuries,
indulgences big and small, that the poor, the working classes, the middle of the
middle, and the least refined of the rich could not afford or appreciate. ... Products
from Prada, Gucci, Lexus, and Evian became a 'virtual fifth food group,' as the
United States, one commentator announced, became 'one nation under luxury.' ...
"Increasingly over the last two decades, women and men with higher salaries and
more college classes under their belt broke away from the sensible middle class
and engaged in a new round of conspicuous consumption. ... Yet they also wanted
to show off their education and know-how. That is where the authenticity part mattered
and where it became, under Starbucks and Whole Foods and so many other natural-looking
chains, more about status and sophistication than it was about the counterculturally
tinged consumption and rebellion against the fake that Jerry Baldwin and his fellow
travelers favored. Post-post-hippies, like [Starbucks CEO] Howard Schultz, associated
authenticity not so much with the search for more genuine products, wrote consumer
behavior specialist Michael Solomon in 2003, as with a range of upscale values,
'like a better lifestyle, personal control, and better taste.'
"To display smarts, superior tastes, and even enlightened politics, the upper classes
of the 1990s focused their buying on things that looked natural and rare but also
required special knowledge to fully understand. They bought a California wine to
demonstrate that they knew about exceptional vintages, or a Viking stove because
they knew that real cooks used these oversized machines, or a bike trip through
Provence because they knew from their college art history classes that the hills
and sun there inspired pained and brilliant painters. ... Buying in post-Reagan
America was not about keeping up with the Joneses; it was about separating yourself
from the Joneses, the conformists in the middle."
Author: Bryant Simon
Title: Everything But The Coffee
Publisher: University of California Press
Date: Copyright 2009 by Bryant Simon
Pages: 36-38
Everything but the Coffee: Learning about America from Starbucks
by Bryant Simon by University of California Press
Hardcover
In today's excerpt - in the 1980s, "conspicuous consumption" reached the middle
class, as middle class consumers began to leave behind the practical but seemingly
dated habits of their parents - embodied by Sears and McDonalds - and traded them
for consumption that they believed would display their uniqueness and authenticity
- buying Evian water and Starbucks coffee. But it was a mass-produced uniqueness
and a fake authenticity:
"For much of the postwar era, the broad, somewhat undifferentiated American middle
class found itself sandwiched between the rich on top and the working-class below
them, with the poor even further below them. Most of these accountants and account
executives, furniture store-owners and doctors shared a common commitment to modesty
and thrift. The rich might show off and spend wildly, but the middle class demonstrated
its sensible frugality by buying convenient and useful items. That didn't mean that
they didn't occasionally splurge on a chrome-trimmed car or a cashmere sweater with
a mink collar or chicken cordon bleu at a French restaurant. But these weren't everyday
things.
"Perhaps no company embodied the consumer ideals of the staid organization men and
steady housewives more than Sears. The Chicago retail giant offered reliable products
at reasonable prices. Good stuff and good value attracted the cautious middle class
who cared more about how long things lasted or how convenient they were than how
they looked. In many middling social circles, the ability to sniff out a deal translated
into social standing and respect. But the same deals that brought the middle classes
to Sears, and then to McDonald's, and later to Wal-Mart, also attracted working
people and the poor. Laborers and the even less well-off went to these places because
they had to; saving a few dollars on cereal, batteries, and paper towels left more
money for clothes, carpeting, and cars. Yet at the upper edges of the middle class,
people with no financial worries didn't want to look, act, or consume like the poor
or the ordinary.
"Looking for ways to distinguish themselves - to broadcast their wealth, know-how,
and sophistication, all key markers of status as the twentieth century drew to a
close - the upper reaches of the middle class developed new consumption patterns
in the 1980s, as Starbucks started to take off. Mostly they looked for luxuries,
indulgences big and small, that the poor, the working classes, the middle of the
middle, and the least refined of the rich could not afford or appreciate. ... Products
from Prada, Gucci, Lexus, and Evian became a 'virtual fifth food group,' as the
United States, one commentator announced, became 'one nation under luxury.' ...
"Increasingly over the last two decades, women and men with higher salaries and
more college classes under their belt broke away from the sensible middle class
and engaged in a new round of conspicuous consumption. ... Yet they also wanted
to show off their education and know-how. That is where the authenticity part mattered
and where it became, under Starbucks and Whole Foods and so many other natural-looking
chains, more about status and sophistication than it was about the counterculturally
tinged consumption and rebellion against the fake that Jerry Baldwin and his fellow
travelers favored. Post-post-hippies, like [Starbucks CEO] Howard Schultz, associated
authenticity not so much with the search for more genuine products, wrote consumer
behavior specialist Michael Solomon in 2003, as with a range of upscale values,
'like a better lifestyle, personal control, and better taste.'
"To display smarts, superior tastes, and even enlightened politics, the upper classes
of the 1990s focused their buying on things that looked natural and rare but also
required special knowledge to fully understand. They bought a California wine to
demonstrate that they knew about exceptional vintages, or a Viking stove because
they knew that real cooks used these oversized machines, or a bike trip through
Provence because they knew from their college art history classes that the hills
and sun there inspired pained and brilliant painters. ... Buying in post-Reagan
America was not about keeping up with the Joneses; it was about separating yourself
from the Joneses, the conformists in the middle."
Author: Bryant Simon
Title: Everything But The Coffee
Publisher: University of California Press
Date: Copyright 2009 by Bryant Simon
Pages: 36-38
Everything but the Coffee: Learning about America from Starbucks
by Bryant Simon by University of California Press
Hardcover