City Research Online

Abstract

Consumption has traditionally been a reliable indicator of one’s social status in society. In today’s marketplace, however, the sharing and digital economies are making signifiers of affluence and high culture more accessible than ever, and the markers that denote one’s position in the status game are becoming increasingly blurred. We posit that in an increasingly digitalized and platformized social and material world, the market changes and democratizes the status game. It emerges as a catalyst for adaptability, enabling more people than before to transcend or reshape embodied resources and emulate high status positions more easily. This does not mean that social class has lost its role; rather it puts into question what is considered a high-status possession, occupation or practice and propels the emergence of new cultural scripts that alter the rules of status signification. In this essay, we outline these dynamics and suggest directions for future research.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Publisher Keywords:	Status signalling, cultural capital, conspicuous consumption, platforms, sharing economy, social class
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) H Social Sciences > HF Commerce H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races
Departments:	Bayes Business School Bayes Business School > Management
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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