Status and Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change

by W. David Marx

The struggle for higher status—whether striving for basic equality or angling for the very top—shapes individual identities, spurs creativity and cultural change, and forms customs and traditions. Humans may possess an innate desire to create, but their inventions achieve broader diffusion when they fulfill others’ status needs. These mechanisms often lead to structural biases against certain groups but, when given the right parameters, they can also open the path to social mobility and greater cultural diversity. The status upheavals of the twentieth century resulted in an explosion in new artifacts supporting a wide range of new sensibilities, as high-status groups used the conventions of less wealthy communities as cultural capital.