Status Updates From Theory of the Leisure Class

An important question: why is fancy?

Heeheehee colonial sounding anthropology about European society

Wow, I get it is tongue-in-cheek about the upper classes, but jokes about barbarism and competition and predatory behavior barely disguise the eugenics and racist undertones of the era. No wonder things got ugly later in the twentieth century.

industrial exemption and conservatism, so bucolic and idyllic places, handcrafted things not industrially produced get high status among this crowd, as well as things that show conservative values and traits.

Pecuniary tastes of rich people and how these tastes become status among the rich. I can see how this drifted down to the consumer economy later in the century as products were pitched to a status-hungry middle class in the mid and late twentieth century.

Chapter four conspicuous consumption products that are expensive and wasteful, and totems of belonging to the upper crust, a demonstration of affluence and wealth.

Chapters one, two, and three. First describing leisure classes in traditional societies and then discussing the conspicuous consumption and the conspicuous leisure with all the manners and pastimes as totems of belonging to this class.

reading a free version from Project Gutenberg.