Chapter 1: The Erosion of the Leisurely Class and the Emergence of the Ambitionary Class
Chapter 2: Conspicuous Consumption in the 21st Century
Chapter 3: Conspicuous Consumption and the New Elites
Chapter 4: How Motherhood Became a Showy Finite
Chapter 5: The Value of Transparency and Conspicuous Production
Chapter 6: Cities and the Ambition Class
Chapter 7: Changing Consumer Culture and Deepening Inequality
Acknowledgements
Appendix: Analysis of Consumer Expenditure Survey Data
main
References

The ambitious class emerged in place of the wealthy class.

“Even when Veblen wrote his essay on the leisure class, conspicuous consumption was limited to a very special social class.
Of course, all social classes engaged in conspicuous consumption to some extent, but the leisure class was the only group that could use material goods to display their status.
Today, material goods are abundant, but their ability to reveal or enable social mobility is diminishing.
There is no longer a dominant leisure class.
The ambitious class that has taken its place is rewriting consumption patterns and simultaneously moving away from traditional conspicuous consumption.” (Chapter 1: The Erosion of the Leisure Class, the Rise of the Aspiring Class, p. 46)

In 1899, Thorstein Veblen sharply captured the social significance of consumption in a capitalist society through “The Theory of the Leisure Class.”
Among them, he fiercely criticized the leisure class as a wealthy and lazy group that constantly flaunted their social and economic status with conspicuous consumption, that is, useless and useless material goods while doing economically unproductive work.
When Veblen wrote "The Theory of the Leisure Class," conspicuous consumption was limited to a very special class, and the leisure class was almost the only group that could show off their social status through material goods.


However, “with the disappearance of the wealthy and lazy aristocracy and the rise of the educated, self-made elite, ‘leisure’ is no longer synonymous with upper class” (p. 34). In other words, unlike Veblen’s time, today’s upper socioeconomic groups work longer hours than anyone else, are more productive throughout their lives, and have less time, not more.
Elizabeth Currid-Halkitt takes up the key concepts of The Theory of the Leisure Class and reexamines contemporary consumer culture and class.

Since Veblen's time, society and the economy have changed dramatically.
As the Industrial Revolution and the development of manufacturing gave rise to a middle class and material goods became cheaper, conspicuous consumption became commonplace.
We have entered an era where most people own at least one luxury item.
The distinction between conspicuous consumption and other forms of consumption has blurred, leading the wealthy and elite to find new ways to display their social status.
They are increasingly distancing themselves from materialism and focusing on social and environmental awareness and knowledge acquisition.
That is, today's consumption as a practice of distinction is focused on non-conspicuous consumption that reveals knowledge level, cultural capital, and social and environmental awareness, rather than conspicuous consumption that involves buying unnecessary, flashy, and ostentatious items.
The author asserts that today there is no longer a dominant leisure class, and that an aspirational class has emerged in its place.

Who are the ambitious class?

So who exactly are the ambitious class? What criteria do they use to distinguish themselves? The author argues that many of those spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on designer goods today are earning their own money.
The majority of them do so through legitimate labor.
Unlike in the past, today's wealthy do not have abundant leisure time, and this has already been proven by numerous studies.
Unlike the leisure class of the past, the ambitious class climbs the economic ladder based on high education, specialized skills, and cultural capital, but the author argues that what unites them is not their income level.
In other words, although most members of the ambitious class are educated and knowledgeable, they do not necessarily occupy the top of the economic pyramid, and many are not part of the wealthy elite in the labor market.
What unites this new class is not income level, but cultural level.

For this new class, knowledge is important, and it is valued regardless of its economic utility.
This is because material goods are no longer a clear indicator of social status.
What sets the ambitious class apart from others is their ability to acquire knowledge and utilize information to form values ​​that are conscious of society and the environment.
Here, consumption functions as a symbol that shows the members' life philosophy and values.
Therefore, the aspiring class includes people who have sufficient education and cultural capital, even if they do not necessarily have high incomes (although the majority are distributed within the top 10 percent of income).
In other words, the aspiring class includes those who have secured economic upward mobility through education and specialized knowledge, such as bankers, lawyers, and engineers, but also includes people with creative writing degrees from Yale University, people in the film industry, screenwriters who have yet to sell their screenplays, and young urbanites working in publishing.

The defining characteristic of this new elite cultural group is the acquisition of knowledge and the values ​​based on it.
They use their knowledge to achieve greater social, environmental and cultural awareness.
Social status is revealed in the process of acquiring knowledge and forming values.
The author thus argues that this new group acquires similar knowledge, shares the same values, and through this embodies a collective consciousness.
For example, reading cultural reviews, keeping up with the latest news, and eating organic food are ways for them to connect with each other regardless of their economic status.
“Knowledge and cultural capital are used to make rational decisions about what to eat, how to treat the environment, and how to become better parents, more productive workers, and more discerning consumers.” (p. 40)

From conspicuous consumption to non-conspicuous consumption

To understand the rise of the aspiring class, we need to examine how conspicuous consumption has changed.
The author analyzes data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to paint a portrait of American consumption.
Chapter 2, which examines conspicuous consumption in the 21st century, and Chapter 3, which discusses the rise of non-conspicuous consumption, provide crucial analyses for understanding the consumption habits and practices of the aspiring class as part of the broader context of American consumer culture.
This book explores why conspicuous consumption is no longer the exclusive domain of the wealthy and explores non-conspicuous consumption as the most consistent and distinguishing consumption practice among elites.
It helps us understand how non-conspicuous consumption, which is generally invisible but reveals status to peers, is the most harmful practice that divides the elite from the rest.
The author's analysis is that non-conspicuous consumption practices, which can be incredibly expensive and invisible, bring about social opportunities and economic mobility that cannot be purchased through conspicuous consumption.

The author summarizes the following key macro trends in American consumption:
First, the wealthy and upper middle class (the top 1 percent, 5 percent, and 10 percent of income earners) spend less on conspicuous consumption than the average American, while the middle class (the top 40 to 60 percent of income earners) spends more.
Second, in terms of expenditure ratio, the middle class has a high proportion of conspicuous consumption relative to its income, while the wealthy class has a low proportion.
Third, the conspicuous consumption of the wealthy is being replaced by non-conspicuous consumption.
In other words, the consumption of the wealthy is being replaced by non-ostentatious but expensive services that create more leisure and life opportunities.
Representative examples include labor-intensive services such as education, medical care, childcare, childcare, and housekeeping.

This is by no means to say that the conspicuous consumption of the wealthy has disappeared.
Unlike in the past, the proportion has decreased significantly, and spending on non-conspicuous consumption areas such as education has increased dramatically.
For example, spending on education in the United States has increased by 60 percent since 1996, but for the top 10 percent of income earners, the increase has been nearly 300 percent.
Given that the shares of other income groups remained largely unchanged, this suggests that spending by the top income group drove the increase in total spending.
The authors predict that the future trajectory will be significantly different because the share of such spending has increased among the top income brackets.
The children who benefit from this increased spending don't just get a better education; they also get better jobs and higher incomes—in short, a better future for themselves and their families.
This type of spending has significantly different outcomes for those who can afford it.

Conspicuous Consumption and the New Elites

Conspicuous consumption is discussed in detail in Chapter 3.
The non-conspicuous consumption that the author speaks of is a practice of consumption that distinguishes itself as “a more subtle and less materialistic form that reveals one’s status only to those who know” (p. 92).
Sometimes these consumption choices are not about displaying status at all, but rather about purchasing goods and services that make life easier, whether it's a luxury item or an investment in a child's life chances.
Non-conspicuous consumption, which at first glance appears ordinary and productive, is actually geared towards consolidating socioeconomic status.

The author analyzes the non-conspicuous consumption of the ambitious class as follows:


First, as many material consumer goods became less accessible and more overt, the wealthy and elites sought lesser-known and coded symbols to signal their social standing.


Second, with the restructuring of the global economy, a meritocratic elite with intellectual ability has been highly valued, and these labor market elites (many of whom are aspiring) believe in upward mobility based on their own experiences and hope that their children will enjoy the same.
They work very hard to achieve and maintain high incomes, making leisure time a very scarce resource.
Even then, most of it is filled with consumer activities, and paradoxically, we have come to a situation where we have to work harder to have more leisure time.
Today's labor market elite, especially those in the aspiring class, secure their leisure time by paying substantial amounts for childcare, housework, vacations, and so on, and then spend money to make the most of it.


Finally, material consumption is no longer prioritized over investing in more important expenditures like education, retirement, and healthcare.
All this consumption becomes a crucial conduit for reproducing the status of the aspiring class and further separating it from the rest of the population, while simultaneously excluding ordinary people through high prices.

The author believes that this non-conspicuous consumption is becoming a new source of class distinction.
Conspicuous consumption is divided into two types: 'conspicuous consumption with information costs' and 'extremely expensive conspicuous consumption'.
Non-conspicuous consumption, which incurs information costs, can seem quite trivial and inexpensive, from the color of nail polish to which columnist you quote in conversation to which restaurant you go to, but it is difficult to access without cultural capital.
Highly expensive conspicuous consumption is a form of consumption that significantly improves the lives of those who can afford it, such as childcare, medical care, and college tuition, while also reinforcing class distinctions.
The author explains that the essence of almost all non-conspicuous consumption is that it is so invisible that only those in the know can detect it, and therefore difficult to imitate without implicit information or significant amounts of money.

The leisure of the ambitious class, marked by productivity, and ostentatious production

Chapters 4 and 5 examine how the leisure and consumption of the aspiring class obscure their privileges and turn them into a kind of moral problem.
In the past, Veblen defined ostentatious finiteness as 'unproductive' time, but the author says that today's ostentatious finiteness of the ambitious class is filled with productivity.
At that point, Chapter 4, 'How Motherhood Became an Exhibitive Finiteness,' discusses various aspects of parenting as new channels for an ostentatious finiteness.
Aspiring parents approach parenting as a developmental project, investing time in practices that maximize their children's future success rather than spending the same amount of time on unproductive leisure activities.


According to the author's analysis, today's choices of certain methods of childbirth and childrearing, such as home birth or breastfeeding, may at first seem like choices based on values, but in reality, they are closely linked to the time (money) and cultural capital that allow for such choices, and this also leads to class reproduction.
As a mother of two, the author draws on her own experiences to reveal that parenting among the aspiring class, including herself, is not unrelated to class practices, even when it may seem like we strive for the "right" way.

The author describes parenting as a prime example of ostentatious finiteness, but argues that in a society where there is constant pressure to be productive in work and life, "productivity" extends beyond parenting.
Universities, which in Veblen's day were considered institutions of ostentatious leisure, have become essential for most people today, and learning has become less a matter of conduct or erudition and more a matter of transforming knowledge into productivity.
Accordingly, the elite of the 21st century have discovered new, ostentatious leisure activities that suggest social status, and the author mentions exercise as a representative example, along with parenting.
The fact that designer sportswear has become a material symbol of ostentatious leisure, and that leisure time is absorbed into opportunities for self-improvement, demonstrates the cultural norms of the aspiring class's influence throughout society.

The author, who makes clear that the myth surrounding ostentatious leisure in the 21st century is a luxury enjoyed by the ruling social class based on time and knowledge, describes ostentatious production as a change brought about by the privilege of affluence and information meeting a backlash against mass production.
Goods produced through conspicuous production are a key area of ​​consumption for the ambitious class.
For the ambitious class, which values ​​knowledge, social and environmental awareness, we are what we eat, drink and consume, the author argues, and thus the opaque production processes of many goods are being replaced by transparency at every step.
A prime example is the rise of specialty coffee, an industry that creates a sense of exclusivity by meticulously managing and transparently disclosing every step of the process from coffee harvesting to extraction. This is vividly described in the success stories of Intelligentsia, one of the "big three specialty coffees" in the U.S. and which recently opened its first global store in Seochon, Korea, and Whole Foods Market, which only handles organic foods.

The city and the ambitious class that have become a 'landscape of consumption'

Chapter 6, 'Cities and the Ambitionary Class', is a chapter that draws a topographical map of the ambitionary class and their consumption patterns through the city.
The 21st century city, which has become a 'landscape of consumption,' is also a place where the diverse consumption practices of the ambitious class unfold.
By examining in detail the consumption patterns of major cities such as New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, which are particularly central to the affluent aspiring class, the author enables us to understand cities as regions that define the 21st-century aspiring class and its unique lifestyle.

When we look at consumption patterns, we see that large cities are just as different from ordinary small towns as they are from each other.
While many past studies have attempted to understand the city as a unified whole, each city is so different in its consumption patterns that it feels as if it came from different planets.
The author reveals the differences between cities quite specifically through the consumption patterns of what people eat, drink, and live in, and describes the luxuries and amenities that exist only in cities, revealing the reality of cities today that reinforce inequality and class divisions.

How does changing consumer culture conceal and reinforce inequality?

The author's problem awareness is clear.
The consumer culture of the ambitious class, which engages in conspicuous production, conspicuous leisure, and non-conspicuous consumption rather than simple conspicuous consumption, is widening the class gap much more secretly and seriously than the material goods consumption of the leisure class in the past.
In other words, investing in education, health, retirement, and childcare, rather than buying silver spoons or taking long vacations, creates class distinctions and further ensures class reproduction in a way that no material goods can.
The author argues that today's inequality is not simply an economic divide, but an unprecedentedly profound cultural divide. He points out that even cultural differences surrounding vague norms like parenting, knowledge, and environmental awareness are rooted in economic positions, and that symbolic boundaries come at a tremendous cost.

In conclusion, the author describes the current state of the American middle class, which stands on the opposite side of the aspiring class and cannot afford the non-conspicuous consumption that the aspiring class so desires.
The reality for the middle class today is that they face massive unemployment, falling housing prices, stagnant wages, and it has become much harder to afford even a material version of a satisfying life, let alone conspicuous consumption.
Things that have a real impact on our quality of life, like education, healthcare, childcare, and college tuition, cost far more than conspicuous consumption items like televisions or minivans.
Today, the wealthiest members of the aspiring class spend here, further widening the gap between themselves and everyone else.

Even the seemingly worthy consumption practices of the aspirational class actually cut across social and economic classes, creating destructive in-group/out-group divisions, the author argues.
Consumption is a simple and effective way for people to distinguish themselves and express their identity.
Various forms of consumption are also clear means of showing class divisions.


The author emphasizes that what is particularly harmful about consumption as a status symbol today is that it is perceived as a moral choice, even though it is in fact about economic constraints or freedom.
This hides inequality.
Parenting, cultural knowledge, and food choices are often packaged as personal preferences or morals, but in reality, most are choices based on socioeconomic status.
Breastfeeding, drinking specialty coffee, exercising with personal training at least three times a week, and filling your grocery cart with organic foods aren't just about values.
"The Ambition Class" reminds us that such consumption practices are not even an option for the vast majority of society, and makes all of us living in a capitalist society, regardless of whether we are members of the ambition class, reconsider the meaning of consumption.