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You Are How You Eat: Food and Identity in the Post‐exilic Period

Nathan MacDonald

in Not Bread Alone: The Uses of Food in the Old Testament

The post-exilic period is often thought to see important developments in the food consciousness of the Israelites, usually in relation to the dietary laws. The importance of the dietary laws only ... More

The post-exilic period is often thought to see important developments in the food consciousness of the Israelites, usually in relation to the dietary laws. The importance of the dietary laws only comes to prominence in the Hellenistic period. Alongside this, and also prior to it, there is a growing fascination with the feasting habits of the Persians, which also contributed to the religious consciousness of Second Temple Jews. The Persians indulge in conspicuous consumption, which both fascinates and repels the writers of Jewish narrative. The characterization of the Persians is important for establishing the nature of Jewish identity, which is exhibited in a moderate attitude towards food. Similar ideas in relation to Greek identity are found in the work of Greek historians. In the Jewish writings this theme is combined with the idea of divine judgement at the table. The table, thus, becomes the place at which ungodliness or righteousness is expressed and punished or rewarded.Less

Status Signaling in International Relations

Xiaoyu Pu

in Rebranding China: Contested Status Signaling in the Changing Global Order

This chapter discusses the theoretical framework of status signaling in international politics. Status signaling is the use of a particular subset of signals to convey the information that a state is ... More

This chapter discusses the theoretical framework of status signaling in international politics. Status signaling is the use of a particular subset of signals to convey the information that a state is asserting a particular standing in international society. In a general sense, status signaling is the mechanism of information transmission that aims to change or maintain a special type of status belief among relevant political actors. Each audience is different, so an emerging power sends different status signals. There are various means through which the national leaders can signal the preferred status of their nation. This chapter identifies strategies and tactics of status signaling: conspicuous consumption, conspicuous giving, and strategic spinning.Less

Explaining Conspicuous Consumption in International Relations

Lilach Gilady

in The Price of Prestige: Conspicuous Consumption in International Relations

This book examines the role of prestige in international relations through an analysis of conspicuous consumption. Drawing on the economic literature on Veblen effects, it argues that states pursue ... More

This book examines the role of prestige in international relations through an analysis of conspicuous consumption. Drawing on the economic literature on Veblen effects, it argues that states pursue prestige by engaging in conspicuous consumption and that this quest for prestige is similar to the quest for power as a motivating force in international affairs. According to Veblenian theory, actors use consumption as a signal to indicate their social station and are willing to pay more in the hope that the additional expense may buy them prestige. The book also explores the logic of status symbols in international relations and demonstrates the dynamics of conspicuous consumption using three international “luxury commodities”: aircraft carriers, prosocial policies, and Big Science projects. This chapter elaborates each of these themes.Less

Domestic Audience, Nationalism, and Weapons of Mass Consumption

Xiaoyu Pu

in Rebranding China: Contested Status Signaling in the Changing Global Order

This chapter opens with a conceptual analysis of how China signals a higher status through conspicuous consumption in international relations. It then turns to the importance of domestic audience and ... More

This chapter opens with a conceptual analysis of how China signals a higher status through conspicuous consumption in international relations. It then turns to the importance of domestic audience and nationalism. The chapter discusses China’s aircraft carrier project and 2015 military parade, examining the underlying motivations and comparing the status signaling argument with competing approaches.Less

Nubian Land Sales as Ceremony

Giovanni R. Ruffini

in Medieval Nubia: A Social and Economic History

This chapter explores the social and ceremonial aspects of Nubian land sales. It explores the food and drink sometimes paid to witnesses of these land sales. It argues, building on the theories of ... More

This chapter explores the social and ceremonial aspects of Nubian land sales. It explores the food and drink sometimes paid to witnesses of these land sales. It argues, building on the theories of Marcel Mauss, that these payments are a form of gift exchange or conspicuous consumption designed to heighten the prestige of the givers and to liquidate wealth. This practice may be related to a more generic role for food in Nubian legal transactions, as suggested by obscure references to date eating in the context of document depositions. The ceremonial role of date eating, specifically, and the importance of food consumption, more generally, each have comparanda in modern Nubian society and in societies elsewhere in early modern and modern Sudan. This chapter also argues that the presence of witnesses serves more than a strictly legal function. The witnesses bring social legitimacy to a transaction and allow the community to create a public display of its lines of prestige and authority.Less

Social mechanisms generating demand: a review and manifesto

Alan Warde

in Innovation By Demand: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Study of Demand and its Role in Innovation

This chapter reflects on the development of sociological approaches to consumption and their contribution to the explanation of consumer behaviour. Tentative and programmatic, it is concerned with ... More

This chapter reflects on the development of sociological approaches to consumption and their contribution to the explanation of consumer behaviour. Tentative and programmatic, it is concerned with defining some of the ways in which sociology might proceed in analysing consumption. It offers some record of recent developments and achievements. It is cast as a reflection on the limits of a key concept, conspicuous consumption, arguing that sociological explanations have paid too much attention to the visible and the remarkable and have therefore generalised too widely from acts of conspicuous consumption. The chapter reviews a number of mechanisms which generate ordinary and inconspicuous consumption. This permits the identification of some important and neglected inconspicuous features of final consumption. Processes examined include habituation, routinisation, normalisation, appropriation and singularisation, putative bases for understanding the dull compulsion to consume. Asserting a distinction in the ways that economists and sociologists use the concepts of demand and consumption, the chapter contributes to interdisciplinary dialogue.Less

A Contest of Beneficence: Prosociality in International Relations

Lilach Gilady

in The Price of Prestige: Conspicuous Consumption in International Relations

This chapter examines prosociality as conspicuous consumption in international relations. More specifically, it discusses ten puzzling empirical patterns of international prosociality that are ... More

This chapter examines prosociality as conspicuous consumption in international relations. More specifically, it discusses ten puzzling empirical patterns of international prosociality that are consistent with the conspicuous consumption framework. Before analyzing these puzzles and how they relate to conspicuous consumption, the chapter first considers the link between rationalism and prosociality. It then introduces a conspicuous consumption model of prosociality and describes three empirical implications of prosociality as conspicuous consumption: its association with patterns of subordination and domination, its connection to conflict, and its interaction with class. It shows that for prestige maximizers, there is no difference between prosocial other-help and self-help; that actors' prosocial investment is compensated through increased prestige and improved rank; that prosociality requires excess; and that conspicuous displays of excess guarantee prestige.Less

Conclusions: Living in a Veblenian World

Lilach Gilady

in The Price of Prestige: Conspicuous Consumption in International Relations

This chapter considers two examples of contemporary conspicuous consumption, the giant bronze statue in Senegal and the proposed resurrection of the Colossus of Rhodes in Greece, to illustrate the ... More

This chapter considers two examples of contemporary conspicuous consumption, the giant bronze statue in Senegal and the proposed resurrection of the Colossus of Rhodes in Greece, to illustrate the puzzling paradox that stands at the heart of this book: the need to explain the logic through which questionable expenditure can become a source of prestige. These examples also echo many of Thorstein Veblen's original insights. The chapter reiterates the importance of prestige and discusses the four dimensions of conspicuous consumption: conspicuousness, cost, hierarchy, and cycles of status symbols. It also considers the rationalist approach to conspicuous consumption and how viewing the world through a Veblenian lens paints a provocative picture of international relations. It concludes by suggesting directions for future research on conspicuous consumption.Less

Inequality, Conspicuous Consumption, and the Growth Trap

Jon D. Wisman

in The Origins and Dynamics of Inequality: Sex, Politics, and Ideology

Avoiding devastation of the human habitat is arguably the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced, and high inequality greatly impairs successfully addressing this threat. In societies in which ... More

Avoiding devastation of the human habitat is arguably the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced, and high inequality greatly impairs successfully addressing this threat. In societies in which fluid social mobility is believed possible, inequality encourages households to seek social certification and status through consumption. Rising inequality strengthens this dynamic. The institutions and behavior generated by the belief that ever-greater consumption brings ever-greater well-being reduce the potential for people to achieve social status and self-respect through more environmentally friendly domains such as democratized work and community. Inequality impedes responses aimed at reducing environmental damage by augmenting the political power of the wealthy, whose interests would be most harmed by measures to protect the environment. The wealthy benefit from pollution because their far greater consumption is made less expensive and their assets yield higher profits. They are also better able to shield themselves from the negative consequences of environmental degradation.Less

The Aircraft Carrier Club

Lilach Gilady

in The Price of Prestige: Conspicuous Consumption in International Relations

This chapter examines the dynamics of international conspicuous consumption by focusing on an international “luxury commodity”: the aircraft carrier. It begins with a background on the Swedish ... More

This chapter examines the dynamics of international conspicuous consumption by focusing on an international “luxury commodity”: the aircraft carrier. It begins with a background on the Swedish warship Vasa, which sank on the day of its maiden voyage and offers a cautionary tale highlighting the potential tension between size, conspicuousness, extravagance, and the strategic utility of weaponry. The chapter then considers the relationship between conspicuousness and naval power and goes on to disentangle the intrinsic strategic value of a vessel from its symbolic value as a venue for conspicuous consumption by focusing on deterrence. It also describes methods for differentiating between primary-utility explanations of procurement and those based on conspicuous consumption. Finally, it analyzes the state of the world's carrier fleet, with emphasis on the tension between aircraft carriers' questionable strategic utility and their well-established role as a vessels of prestige.Less

A Taste for Waste

Elizabeth V. Spelman

in Trash Talks: Revelations in the Rubbish

While it is clear in Chapter 1 that on the whole people don’t like others going through their trash, at the center of this chapter is the fact that many are quite enthusiastic about exhibiting the ... More

While it is clear in Chapter 1 that on the whole people don’t like others going through their trash, at the center of this chapter is the fact that many are quite enthusiastic about exhibiting the capacity to be wasteful—a predilection examined at great length by the economist and social critic Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929). Turning to Veblen’s famous The Theory of the Leisure Class and other parts of the large Veblen oeuvre, this chapter focuses on Veblen’s account of “conspicuous consumption,” “conspicuous leisure,” and related forms of “conspicuous waste” as means of establishing “invidious distinctions” among people. Though questions persist about how faithfully his views presented the world he depicted or how prescient he was or could have been about the world we now inhabit, he remains one of the most piercing portraitists of the uses of waste and wastefulness to establish social standing.Less

Big Science and the Transits of Venus: The First Race to Space

Lilach Gilady

in The Price of Prestige: Conspicuous Consumption in International Relations

This chapter examines the connection between extravagant state-funded scientific megaprojects—known as Big Science—and international prestige by focusing on the Transits of Venus (TOVs). It first ... More

This chapter examines the connection between extravagant state-funded scientific megaprojects—known as Big Science—and international prestige by focusing on the Transits of Venus (TOVs). It first provides an overview of the international reaction to China's 2003 launch of the spacecraft Shenzhou V and whether it raised the prospects for a renewed space race before discussing Big Science projects such as space programs and ambitious biomedical projects like the Human Genome Project as examples of conspicuous consumption. It then considers Big Science in relation to prestige and three primary utility-based alternatives that explain Big Science as strategic investment, as a promoter of knowledge, and as pork-barrel politics, arguing that conspicuous consumption is a necessary complementary component for the analysis of Big Science. It also describes the international race to observe the TOVs of 1761, 1769, 1874, and 1882 as a case study of conspicuous consumption.Less

Inconspicuous Consumption

David Kuchta

in The Three-Piece Suit and Modern Masculinity: England, 1550-1850

This chapter provides a definition for inconspicuous consumption where elite men's fashion is considered as opposition to luxury. It explains that this distinction was driven not by a sociology of ... More

This chapter provides a definition for inconspicuous consumption where elite men's fashion is considered as opposition to luxury. It explains that this distinction was driven not by a sociology of conspicuous consumption and invidious distinction (the attempt to keep up with, or ahead of, the Joneses), but by a dynamic of inconspicuous consumption and invidious indistinction (the attempt to keep away from, hidden from, and superior to, the Joneses). It observes that in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it was competition for social distinction—fashion itself—that motivated the anti-fashion movement of the great masculine renunciation. It concludes that in attempting to create an image of masculinity compatible with ideals of liberty and property, the three-piece suit merely reproduced a fashion tyranny in inverted form.Less

Benvenuto Cellini and the Art of Conspicuous Production

in In Your Face: Professional Improprieties and the Art of Being Conspicuous in Sixteenth-Century Italy

This chapter discusses Benvenuto Cellini, the Florentine goldsmith turned sculptor who immortalized himself by telling the story of his life not only as an artist but also as a belligerent, forceful, ... More

This chapter discusses Benvenuto Cellini, the Florentine goldsmith turned sculptor who immortalized himself by telling the story of his life not only as an artist but also as a belligerent, forceful, and at times fiercely arrogant man. It focuses primarily on Cellini's monumental Vita, an innovative book written toward the end of his life and remaining in manuscript form for 159 years after his death. The Vita tells his story as a wonder-eliciting maker of objects for a public obsessed with collecting things of all sizes and value in an increasingly courtly world defined by conspicuous consumption.Less

Why we buy: evolution, marketing, and consumer behaviour

Vladas Griskevicius, Joshua M Ackerman, and Joseph P Redden

in Applied Evolutionary Psychology

Although one might think that evolution has little to do with modern consumer behaviour, a closer inspection of our ancestral roots can provide much insight into why we buy. An evolutionary ... More

Although one might think that evolution has little to do with modern consumer behaviour, a closer inspection of our ancestral roots can provide much insight into why we buy. An evolutionary perspective suggests that we interact with our present-day world using brains that evolved to solve a recurring set of ancestral challenges. Accordingly, a growing body of research suggests that a set of evolutionary social motives continues to influence much modern behaviour, albeit not always in obvious or conscious ways. These motives include making friends, gaining status, attracting a mate, keeping a mate, protecting ourselves from danger, and caring for offspring. By considering how and why deep-seated ancestral motives continue to shape modern behaviour, we examine their implications for modern marketing and consumer behaviour. We detail how evolutionary considerations of motivation have novel applications for many areas of marketing, including market segmentation, consumers targeting, brand positioning, and advertising.Less

Moral Equivalents

Kathleen M. Higgins

in Value and Values: Economics and Justice in an Age of Global Interdependence

This chapter examines the idea of a moral equivalence in the context of value and values. It begins with a discussion of William James's suggestion that enlisting the youth in public service projects ... More

This chapter examines the idea of a moral equivalence in the context of value and values. It begins with a discussion of William James's suggestion that enlisting the youth in public service projects could serve as the moral equivalent of war in strengthening the character of young people and making them socially responsible. In his 1910 essay “The Moral Equivalent of War,” James calls for a reevaluation of our institutions in terms of costs and benefits, thus raising a market exchange question: How can we as a society make better deals for ourselves? The chapter uses this capitalist logic of “getting the best deal” to explore the possibility of marketing environmentalism rather than asceticism as the moral equivalent of sacrifice for the common good. It also considers environmentally sound displays of wealth and humanitarian largesse as moral equivalents of conspicuous consumption. The chapter looks at Friedrich Nietzsche's argument regarding the revaluation of values and argues that we should reconsider not only moral values, but also the economic ones enshrined in capitalism.Less

Intervention, Mapping and Excavation: White Caricatures versus Black Dehumanisation in Swallow Hard: The Lancaster Dinner Service (2007)

Celeste-Marie Bernier, Alan Rice, Lubaina Himid, and Hannah Durkin

in Inside the invisible: Memorialising Slavery and Freedom in the Life and Works of Lubaina Himid

Swallow Hard: The Lancaster Dinner Service was part of the Abolished? exhibition in Lancaster. It uses overpainted eighteenth and early nineteenth century plates, tureens, jugs and dishes to comment ... More

Swallow Hard: The Lancaster Dinner Service was part of the Abolished? exhibition in Lancaster. It uses overpainted eighteenth and early nineteenth century plates, tureens, jugs and dishes to comment on the legacy of slavery in the port town. It displays caricatured white figures which interrogate Lancaster’s slave-produced wealth and noble black figures which memorialise a black presence that has been forgotten in histories of the town. Other images explore local flora and fauna and the slave ships, built in the city, sailing to Africa and then sold on so others can continue the trade. It speaks to the conspicuous consumption built on the exploitation of human traffic and the consequences for those who are exploited. Working against nostalgia for confected histories she shows the full human costs of imperial wealth. Her work cannot fully make amends for the traumatic past but expresses artistically forgotten and elided histories.Less

Super Sunday

Richard C. Crepeau

in NFL Football: A History of America's New National Pastime

The Super Bowl has become a Mid-winter National Festival, a celebration of excess that somehow keeps growing. It is best spoken of in terminology created by Thorstein Veblen in his examination of the ... More

The Super Bowl has become a Mid-winter National Festival, a celebration of excess that somehow keeps growing. It is best spoken of in terminology created by Thorstein Veblen in his examination of the lives of the new rich in America’s Gilded Age of the late 19th century. Such phrases as Conspicuous Consumption, Conspicuous Waste, and Pecuniary Emulation seem to have been created for the spectacle of the Super Bowl. There are a multitude of measurements of superness including television ratings, television production techniques, corporate parties, and advertising costs. This chapter chronicles the growth and development of these indicators from Super Bowl I to Super Bowl LIV. Cities and States spend excessively, as indeed required by the NFL, to get the right to host a Super Bowl that allegedly brings get wealth and notoriety to that location. Individuals spend excessively to attend the game or to stay home and host lavish or modest parties. The amount of food and drink consumed on Super Sunday is second only to Thanksgiving Day. The use of Roman Numerals gives an Imperial touch to the occasion. The Super Bowl occupies growing space on the internet and in social media adapting to every new wrinkle in e-technology. The commercials for the game have become a mini-film festival and for many have become the main interest of the Super Bowl, not the game. Gambling on the game has spread worldwide along with television broadcasting, and every possible bet imaginable is made on and around the game. There is high interest in the parties and for some, particularly the Playboy and Maxim parties, attendance is a sure method of conspicuous leisure. There is two weeks between the Conference Championships and the Super Bowl to allow sufficient time to binge on the event. In the end, it is growth in everything even remotely related to the Super Bowl that marks this National holiday that excessively celebrates excess.Less

Fussing over Status

Michael Ian Borer

in Vegas Brews: Craft Beer and the Birth of a Local Scene

Chapter 4 shows how negative ideological baggage can be passed down from the translocal to the local. This is evident in the varying ways that women are treated within the scene as well as the ways ... More

Chapter 4 shows how negative ideological baggage can be passed down from the translocal to the local. This is evident in the varying ways that women are treated within the scene as well as the ways that the intoxication of craft can lead to regressive acts of materialism and conspicuous consumption. Such practices run counter to the egalitarian ethos espoused by craft beer scene participants.Less