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Affluence and status signaling using clothing: is there an inverse correlation? Any recommended scientific literature on this? Personal anecdata: * I notice a

Affluence and status signaling using clothing: is there an inverse correlation? Any recommended scientific literature on this? Personal anecdata: * I notice a more relaxed attitude to mended clothes in my native western European country than in my eastern European second home country. * I also noticed a pattern in secondary school. In the economically privileged environment I went to school, kids cared less about clothing brands than at the less afluent schools in the vicinity. * I carry mended clothes to work every now and then.

jdietrich 8y ago
>Affluence and status signaling using clothing: is there an inverse correlation? It's straightforward countersignalling - some people are sufficiently wealthy that the cost of their clothes carry negligible economic signalling value, so they can signify the fact that they're above that level of status game or use their clothes to convey different kinds of status. Nobody would believe that the Prince of Wales can't afford a new suit, so patching a tear in his jacket signals thrift and tradition. The patch in his jacket signals that he is old money, that his status is higher than someone who needs to signal their status through clothing. Distressed jeans are the obvious example of retail-level countersignalling; when you can buy a new pair of jeans for $8 at Walmart, the fact that your jeans aren't ripped at the knee carries very limited signalling value, making the countersignal more accessible. We see the same thing with cycling. The very poor cycle, because they can't afford a car. The very wealthy cycle, because nobody would believe that they can't afford a car and choosing to cycle signals that they could obviously afford to drive but they're conscious of their health or the environment. People in the middle wouldn't be seen dead on a bicycle, because they're not confident of their ability to convey the high-status countersignal rather than the low-status signal. In this example, social capital often substitutes for economic capital; if you're young, bohemian and cosmopolitan, you can more easily convey the countersignal. There's a fairly nuanced meta-signal that says "I have the education and the opportunity needed to be a wealthy professional, but I have made the conscious choice to be an impoverished artist instead". I'd argue that the strong social safety net in western Europe drives more people into countersignalling and meta-signalling behaviour, because base-level signalling of economic security is less necessary. You don't need to signal the fact that you're not desperately poor in a society where very few people are desperately poor, which opens up a wider range of signalling behaviours.
- adverbly 8y ago
  When I visited London, UK a couple years ago, I saw the "class system" up close for the first time. A friend pointed out that the lower and upper class actually had a more in common in certain ways than the upper and middle. Neither typically fit in with certain norms. The lower due to necessity, the upper due to immunity - they would simply be labeled eccentric. It has stuck with me every since, and honestly has made me realize how silly this practice of signaling to each other is. It is entirely a phenomenon coming out of the middle class. Even signaling among the upper class is usually due to young or new money. I often wonder if it was always like this, or of it was created when the consumer middle class was created in the last hundred or so years.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    Isn’t this the whole premise of The Millionaire Next Door?
  - jdietrich 8y ago
    >I often wonder if it was always like this, or of it was created when the consumer middle class was created in the last hundred or so years. Sumptuary laws are an interesting example - at various times in our history, people of certain social status were forbidden by law to wear certain garments or own certain items. Sometimes this was to prevent runaway consumption due to zero-sum status games, but often it was because the declining cost of luxury goods or the emergence of a nouveau riche undermined the status of the established elite. I'd argue that the invention of fashion was a necessary response to the falling cost of clothing; when most people of a given social standing can afford equally high-quality clothing, fashion emerges as a kind of planned obsolescence. The emergence of cultural capital amongst the aristocracy of the 17th century feels remarkably modern. During this period, the role of universities expanded from being practical training colleges for clergymen to a status symbol. The children of landowners could afford to spend their time cultivating "useless" knowledge, while the children of the nouveau riche merchant class needed to learn the family business. Young aristocrats would embark on what we might now describe as a gap year, travelling across Europe to gather knowledge of exotic cultures and collect souvenirs. It could be argued that modern science emerged largely as a byproduct of status signalling - many of the idle rich spent their days showing off expensive scientific apparatus and their access to the latest books and journals, inadvertently inventing modernity in the process. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumptuary_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumptuary_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour

jdietrich 8y ago

>Affluence and status signaling using clothing: is there an inverse correlation? It's straightforward countersignalling - some people are sufficiently wealthy that the cost of their clothes carry negligible economic signalling value, so they can signify the fact that they're above that level of status game or use their clothes to convey different kinds of status. Nobody would believe that the Prince of Wales can't afford a new suit, so patching a tear in his jacket signals thrift and tradition. The patch in his jacket signals that he is old money, that his status is higher than someone who needs to signal their status through clothing. Distressed jeans are the obvious example of retail-level countersignalling; when you can buy a new pair of jeans for $8 at Walmart, the fact that your jeans aren't ripped at the knee carries very limited signalling value, making the countersignal more accessible. We see the same thing with cycling. The very poor cycle, because they can't afford a car. The very wealthy cycle, because nobody would believe that they can't afford a car and choosing to cycle signals that they could obviously afford to drive but they're conscious of their health or the environment. People in the middle wouldn't be seen dead on a bicycle, because they're not confident of their ability to convey the high-status countersignal rather than the low-status signal. In this example, social capital often substitutes for economic capital; if you're young, bohemian and cosmopolitan, you can more easily convey the countersignal. There's a fairly nuanced meta-signal that says "I have the education and the opportunity needed to be a wealthy professional, but I have made the conscious choice to be an impoverished artist instead". I'd argue that the strong social safety net in western Europe drives more people into countersignalling and meta-signalling behaviour, because base-level signalling of economic security is less necessary. You don't need to signal the fact that you're not desperately poor in a society where very few people are desperately poor, which opens up a wider range of signalling behaviours.

adverbly 8y ago
When I visited London, UK a couple years ago, I saw the "class system" up close for the first time. A friend pointed out that the lower and upper class actually had a more in common in certain ways than the upper and middle. Neither typically fit in with certain norms. The lower due to necessity, the upper due to immunity - they would simply be labeled eccentric. It has stuck with me every since, and honestly has made me realize how silly this practice of signaling to each other is. It is entirely a phenomenon coming out of the middle class. Even signaling among the upper class is usually due to young or new money. I often wonder if it was always like this, or of it was created when the consumer middle class was created in the last hundred or so years.
- scarface74 8y ago
  Isn’t this the whole premise of The Millionaire Next Door?
- jdietrich 8y ago
  >I often wonder if it was always like this, or of it was created when the consumer middle class was created in the last hundred or so years. Sumptuary laws are an interesting example - at various times in our history, people of certain social status were forbidden by law to wear certain garments or own certain items. Sometimes this was to prevent runaway consumption due to zero-sum status games, but often it was because the declining cost of luxury goods or the emergence of a nouveau riche undermined the status of the established elite. I'd argue that the invention of fashion was a necessary response to the falling cost of clothing; when most people of a given social standing can afford equally high-quality clothing, fashion emerges as a kind of planned obsolescence. The emergence of cultural capital amongst the aristocracy of the 17th century feels remarkably modern. During this period, the role of universities expanded from being practical training colleges for clergymen to a status symbol. The children of landowners could afford to spend their time cultivating "useless" knowledge, while the children of the nouveau riche merchant class needed to learn the family business. Young aristocrats would embark on what we might now describe as a gap year, travelling across Europe to gather knowledge of exotic cultures and collect souvenirs. It could be argued that modern science emerged largely as a byproduct of status signalling - many of the idle rich spent their days showing off expensive scientific apparatus and their access to the latest books and journals, inadvertently inventing modernity in the process. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumptuary_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumptuary_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour