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Status and culture : how our desire for higher social rank shapes identity, fosters creativity, and changes the world / W. David Marx.

By: Publication details: New York, NY : Viking, [2022]; ©2022.Description: xxi, 346 pages : illustrations ; 24 cmISBN:
  • 0593296702
  • 9780593296707
Other title:
  • How our desire for higher social rank shapes identity, fosters creativity, and changes the world
Subject(s): Additional physical formats: Online version:: Status and cultureDDC classification:
  • 305 23/eng/20220216
LOC classification:
  • HM821 .M37 2022
Contents:
Introduction: the grand mystery of culture and the status taboo -- Status and the individual. The basics of status -- Conventions and status value -- Signaling and status symbols -- Taste, authenticity, and identity -- Status and creativity. Classes and sensibillities -- Subcultures and countercultures -- Art -- Status and cultural change. Fashion cycles -- History and continuity -- Status and culture in the twenty-first century. The internet age -- Status equality and cultural creativity.
Summary: "All humans share a need to secure their social standing, and this universal motivation structures our behavior, forms our tastes, determines how we live, and ultimately shapes who we are. We can use status, then, to explain why some things become "cool," how stylistic innovations arise, and why there are constant changes in clothing, music, food, sports, slang, travel, hairstyles, and even dog breeds. In Status and Culture, W. David Marx weaves together the wisdom from history, psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, philosophy, linguistics, semiotics, cultural theory, literary theory, art history, media studies, and neuroscience to demonstrate exactly how individual status seeking creates our cultural ecosystem. Marx examines three fundamental questions: Why do individuals cluster around arbitrary behaviors and take deep meaning from them? How do distinct styles, conventions, and sensibilities emerge? Why do we change behaviors over time and why do some behaviors stick around? The answers then provide new perspectives for understanding the seeming 'weightlessness' of internet culture. Status and Culture is a book that will appeal to business people, students, creators, and anyone who has ever wondered why things become popular, why their own preferences change over time, and how identity plays out in contemporary society. Readers of this book will walk away with deep and lasting knowledge of the often secret rules of how culture really works." --publisher's website.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [277]-330) and index.

Introduction: the grand mystery of culture and the status taboo -- Status and the individual. The basics of status -- Conventions and status value -- Signaling and status symbols -- Taste, authenticity, and identity -- Status and creativity. Classes and sensibillities -- Subcultures and countercultures -- Art -- Status and cultural change. Fashion cycles -- History and continuity -- Status and culture in the twenty-first century. The internet age -- Status equality and cultural creativity.

"All humans share a need to secure their social standing, and this universal motivation structures our behavior, forms our tastes, determines how we live, and ultimately shapes who we are. We can use status, then, to explain why some things become "cool," how stylistic innovations arise, and why there are constant changes in clothing, music, food, sports, slang, travel, hairstyles, and even dog breeds. In Status and Culture, W. David Marx weaves together the wisdom from history, psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, philosophy, linguistics, semiotics, cultural theory, literary theory, art history, media studies, and neuroscience to demonstrate exactly how individual status seeking creates our cultural ecosystem. Marx examines three fundamental questions: Why do individuals cluster around arbitrary behaviors and take deep meaning from them? How do distinct styles, conventions, and sensibilities emerge? Why do we change behaviors over time and why do some behaviors stick around? The answers then provide new perspectives for understanding the seeming 'weightlessness' of internet culture. Status and Culture is a book that will appeal to business people, students, creators, and anyone who has ever wondered why things become popular, why their own preferences change over time, and how identity plays out in contemporary society. Readers of this book will walk away with deep and lasting knowledge of the often secret rules of how culture really works." --publisher's website.

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