Cultural Consumption and Economic Capital

Conspicuous consumption is a term coined by the American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen which basically refers to the upper class and how they like to show off how much money they have and consume luxurious goods like cars and yachts.

Below is a photograph of the singer P.Diddy in his Rolls-Royce - and it does not take a person with a vast knowledge on cars to know what a Rolls-Royce is.

Source

The irony of the situation is that P.Diddy is in the singing business, and he definitely does not sing in the Opera. He is associated with popular culture, also known as “low-brow culture”. Because he makes so much money, he is able to spend it on things such as luxury cars and expensive suits and he is able to enjoy conspicuous leisure- like driving around in his car and partying all night long. He is therefore a cultural omnivore and often does something called code-switching. This is where a person is capable of negotiating with multiple cultural worlds.

Another example of this is the rapper Jay-Z. Not only is he a rapper but also a singer and a CEO. He is also culturally omnivorous and is able to switch between different cultural worlds such as rapping vs. negotiating business deals.

P.Diddy’s children will be influenced by their father’s status as a singer and by his high income. So they will inherit his cultural capital and be able to some day, possibly, turn that into more economic capital. This is because they are constantly being influenced by their surroundings, which is now part of the upper-class thanks to their father’s highly successful career. And they are being molded into cultured individuals from such a young age. This will give them an advantage over other people when looking for job opportunities or potentially starting their own business because of the fact that they have been exposed to different types of culture and have been taught things that other children of lesser classes might not have been taught.

However, this is not always true because if someone wanted to go into, for example, the computer business, they would not necessarily need cultural capital. They would need the technical abilities and expertise to work in that field. So, there are exceptions to every rule but one can see that cultural capital can be converted into economic capital in most cases.

The wealthy side of cultural consumption

Why does the image matter so much? The answer lies in what is called cultural capital. Cultural capital is best demonstrated in the behaviors of the wealthy class in the society and simply stands for the consumption of the upper-class families in the society.

In the movie The Nanny Diaries, It is very obvious that cultural tastes have value and could be transferred to others as well as they could be converted to financial wealth to help reproduce the class structure of the society. This means that wealthy families introduce their children to arts and take them to museums, plays, concerts and send them to private piano, violin and ballet lessons.

This process is represented in the movie through the X family who are an example for the stereotypical upper-east side family in Manhattan. Through the movie it is reviled that the wealthy X family has several traditions including forcing their child to eat expensive French food and to spend his time in educational activities which include learning French so he could be enrolled into a prestigious French school. If school was canceled or if he ever has any free time, he is allowed to go visit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Morgan Library and the French culinary institute. 

These attempts made by the X family was to cultivate in their child the sense of respect and esteem for the fine arts and cosmopolitan culture that they themselves have come to appreciate or least value.

However, these attempts are pricey, such private lessons, foreign travel and private schools cost a lot of money. In this sense, economic capital could be converted into cultural capital as an investment. 

This means that cultural capital is transferrable (form parents to children) and converitable (to economic rewards) which means that it plays a role in reproducing the class structure of the society which starts from wealthy, upper-class parents. As much cultural capital they put into their children, as much as their children generate enough cultural capital on their own to effectively continue the cycle.


During a job application process and on the job itself, those who make the most of their cultural capital are able to convert it back into economical wealth through the financial rewards of the high-paying job itself. This cycle means that upper classes are reproducing themselves over and over again and building a wall to distinguish between their elite cultural consumption and the ones who lake it.

Academy Awards - Highbrow Culture Awards?

The months of January and February are usually known as award season in Hollywood, due to the numerous film awards that take place. It starts off with certain critic awards such as the Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards or the Chicago Film Critics Association. Then perhaps the most acclaimed critics awards the Golden Globes, hosted by the Hollywood Foreign Press. These awards are decided upon by critics, who tend to fall under the lowbrow culture. These awards are followed by more presitigious awards such as the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) awards or Directors Guild of America followed by the most prestigious film awards The Academy Awards (The Oscars). These awards are voted by industry professionals such as very successful directors, actors, producers, in essence people into highbrow culture.

The winners of the various guild awards are usually great indications as to who will win the Oscars, since the members tend to overlap. Interestingly, the highbrow tastes of the members of the Academy is very evident by looking at the various Oscar winners. The year of 2009, Avatar was the most successful and critically acclaimed movie of the year. The movie won best picture in various critic awards such as New York Film Critics Online, the Critics Choice Award and The People's Choice Awards. However, it lost the Academy Awards to a much more highbrow film, The Hurt Locker, critics and people called it a huge upset. Avatar was a fantasy film revolving around aliens and magical creatures, not exactly highbrow culture, meanwhile The Hurt Locker, revolved around the struggle soldiers, mainly bomb defusers, face in Iraq, much more highbrow. In the past the last, and only, fantasy film to win the Best Picture Awards was The Lord of the Rings - Return of the King in 2003 and even that was sort of highbrow culture since it was adapted from a book.

Most recently, The Social Network , in my opinion best movie of the year, lost to The King's Speech, which was a very good movie however not as good as The Social Network, it was much

more suited for highbrow culture than the Social Network. The Social Network won most critic awards as well as the Golden Globes, during all of January and half of February it was the clear frontrunner. It was almost a sure thing. Then, the Guild Awards rolled in, with every guild award it seemed The King's Speech was gaining support and The Social Network was losing it. The Social Network wasn't Highbrow enough.

Therefore, once again highbrow culture seems to get more recognition then lowbrow with little regard to quality and more to taste.

Anorexia Nervosa and Media's portrayals of Beauty

Anorexia Nervosa is one of those modern diseases that mostly exist among teenagers and especially among girls. The consequences of having such disease are life threatening and can lead to sudden death as well. A person with Anorexia tends to starve himself by eating small portions of food and exercising excessively, along with weighing himself multiple times per day. The reasons behind such disease relate to personal or psychological problems, however, I do believe that the false image of beauty portrayed by the media and represented by skinny models or famous stars on television and magazines, has contributed in pressurizing women to remain thin in every way and has influenced their perspective of beauty.



Nowadays, many celebrities are victims of Anorexia, and they are considered as role models of beauty and even perfection to the audience. The majority of women in the media are skinny, tall and young. Magazines and Internet blogs are full with articles that concern the latest methods of losing the extra pounds and how being skinny is the key for attractiveness and satisfaction. Unfortunately, many women compel themselves to follow what celebrities provide. Therefore, their self-confidence level diminishes and they become unsatisfied with themselves. Monitoring the type of food we eat and losing some extra pounds are beneficial ways towards a healthy lifestyle. But women abuse such concepts by being addicted to becoming or remaining skinny.



Gaining one or two pounds leads a person to starve himself and even prevent himself from eating through out the day. This is exactly what fashion models do a few days or a week before a fashion show. Even though many models have died from such habits, being anorexic does not worry other models, but they are horrified by the idea of being unaccepted or rejected for gaining weight. This illustrates exactly how far women can reach just to lose weight.



Anorexia is a disease spread among young women and we should raise as much awareness to combat and abolish such disease. Future generations are threatened and they must be protected from the negative influence given by the media. I think that beauty is subjective and different individuals have their own perspectives. Schools should provide opportunities for students to express themselves by giving them presentations about self-image, the dangerous effects of starvation and how to reserve beauty without having a thin figure.

Hit me baby one more time?

Okay so mostly everyone living in the 21st century knows, or was once shamefully obsessed with, the one and only Britney Spears. Less than a decade ago she was a pop culture sensation and was known throughout the world for her talent.

Popular culture refers to the aesthetic products created and sold by profit-seeking firms operating in the global entertainment market (Grazian, p7). So technically britney is regarded as a "product" to be sold to the public, and profit is expected to be made out of her talent.

She started out as an innocent young country girl who just loved to sing but somewhere along the way she lost herself and became a lesser version of herself.

The worst part is that the whole world had to witness her breakdowns and her face was all over the magazines and tabloids.

Who could forget this phase of her life. The whole world witnessed as Britney went through a bad breakup and watched as her career went down to shambles compared to how it was before.

Enough about her past for now. What really got my attention this week was her new music video for her latest single "Hold it Against Me".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Edv8Onsrgg

I figured this would be the time for her to regain herself and maintain her initial claim to fame. The fame that came without the rumors and drugs; the fame that came out of respect for her talent.

But I couldn't be more wrong. The video was not the comeback we were all waiting for, it was more of a video promoting her products and enticing people to buy specific brands.

The video revolved around product placement. Each product was shown really quick but the audience could easily notice the brand and anyone would notice that it was no coincidence that the products were placed in the video.

Less than one minute into the music video Britney receives a perfume from one of the background dancers and of course it is "radiance" by Britney Spears, and the camera zooms in on the perfume and large bold letters are clear to the audience. She sprays some perfume and continues to look for other products to introduce next. Next there is a short pause on a make up packet, Make up forever, which she opens and applies to her eye lids. Then she is shown using the sony plasma touch screen, surfing the web on the the plentyoffish website, which was also seen in Lady Gaga's Telephone video (which is a whole other shameful story about product placement). After that there are plenty of other clips where the word Sony dominates the screen.

Even though the video looks like it would be a high budget project, I reckon it easily broke even and received profit from the ridiculous amount of advertisements in the video.

Are We in Qatar or The States?

It’s very interesting for me when I find out that people do things differently than what I’m used to. Few days ago, I was invited to spend a day on the beach with some friends. We get there and we park next to a huge portacabin with a wide area in front of it. In that area, the owner of the place has set different tents. One of them was closed and the others were open. The closed one had fancy couches while the open ones had mats on the ground set up for coffee gatherings when the weather is nice.

The set up was a beautiful combination of the west and the Middle East. In the closed portacabin there were laptops with wireless connection and a huge T.V playing Prison Break. Outside, there were Qatari guys dancing to traditional Khaliji music.

The majority of the people there, were American ladies who didn’t even know who the owner of the place is. Astonishing enough, he didn’t seem a bit annoyed by the fact that he doesn’t know these ladies. He was very welcoming and hospitable. I have seen Jassem, who is in his late 40’s many times in public. He had his Qatari “Thobe”, walked slowly with a constant frown on his face. That day, he wore shorts and a t-shit and was very hyper and loud. For me, it was like a different person with dual identities. I understand that, being in Qatar for 7 years and knowing the restrictions of the culture, especially the fact that you need to be very contained and cautious in public, which does not encourage Qatari-male and expat-female gatherings.

At lunch, we all sat on the ground around two humongous trays of rice and lamb. They started eating rice with their hands! They tried to teach me how to do that but it was very hard for me, coming from a culture where you absolutely have to use a fork and a knife even while eating pizza or french fries. I also learned many norms related to eating Qatari style. You have to sort of take a portion of the tray that is yours. You cannot not reach to the other end of the try and try to grab a piece of lamb or a handful of rice because it’s considered disrespectful just like eating from another person’s plate. I also learned that you CAN NOT use your left hand, It has to stay behind your back or to your side at all times. According to my Qatari friends, it is religiously not favorable to eat with your left because when you do, it’s like the devil shares your food or something.

Cultural Colonialism

Colonialism may have ended, but it is fair to say that cultural colonialism still lives on.
It is a new, more powerful type of colonialism, in terms of control and domination. Probably one of the main reasons behind this emergence is because of the highly developed technological tools and means that the dominating countries use nowadays. In other words,in sociology, this new type of colonialism can be described as the desire of the first- world countries to mentally and emotionally invade the third-world countries’ values and perceptions through soft and concealed weapons, mainly for economic purposes. In this case, these weapons are the cultural means, such as media, language, education, and religion; that is what the term ‘cultural colonialism’ is all about.



Cultural colonialism has emerged in the 1960s and it has become a threat for the receiving culture, but an enrichment of the colonizers’ cultural identity. The public mass media are the foremost example of this phenomenon. Trough global commercialization of broadcasting, countries can control other counties’ cultural values. The media uses its hegemonic power to increase its country’s economic power. For example, American culture is the most successful at this; by allowing its companies to advertise, it’s like hitting two birds with one stone. The media company is getting money and as an added bonus, the country’s economy is increasing in wealth because people are subconsciously told to purchase new products that they may not even need.






Cultural colonialism also creates cultural dependency on the receiving cultures. For example, the current foreign aid is mainly not targeted towards human development, but rather increases aid dependency in poor countries. Africans in particular, receive rice as food aid from American farmers, therefore Africans farmers become more dependent on food aid and unable to use their own natural resources to compete with other countries or contribute to local food production. The Pakistani population has also been dependent on the U.S. for its economic and military aid. Thus, Pakistan will always need this foreign assistance for its survival and security.






Language can be used to control cultures as well. For example, French is the dominating language in Morocco and this make them completely depended on French, rather than their native language to communicate with each other.