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

by W. David Marx

As teens in subcultures reach adulthood, the social costs of subculture membership begin to outweigh its benefits. At a certain age “selling out” is the better means to secure higher status.

The sociologist David Muggleton interviewed a young punk who claimed that “punk is basically being yourself, freedom, doing what you wanna do, looking like you wanna, like, look like”—all while sporting a stereotypical punk mohawk.

Founded in 1940, Pinnacle was a rural Jamaican commune providing its Black residents a “socialistic life” removed from the oppression of British colonialism. Its founder, Leonard Howell, preached an unorthodox mix of Christianity and Eastern spiritualism: Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie was considered divine, the Pope was the devil, and marijuana was a holy plant. Taking instructions from Leviticus 21:5, the men grew out their hair in a matted style that caused apprehension among outsiders, which was later called “dreadlocks.” Jamaican authorities frowned upon the sect, frequently raiding Pinnacle and eventually locking up Howell in a psychiatric hospital. The crackdown drove Howell’s followers—who became known as Rastafarians—all throughout Jamaica, where they became regarded as folk devils. Parents told children that the Rastafarians lived in drainage ditches and carried around hacked-off human limbs. In 1960 the Jamaican prime minister warned the nation, “These people—and I am glad that it is only a small number of them—are the wicked enemies of our country.” If Rastafarianism had disappeared at this particular juncture, we would remember it no more than other obscure modern spiritual sects, such as theosophy, the Church of Light, and Huna. But the tenets of Rastafarianism lived on, thanks to one extremely important believer: the Jamaican musician Bob Marley. He

The primary sites for subculture/creative-class cross-pollination have been art schools and underground music scenes. The punk community, in particular, arose as an alliance between the British working class and students in art and fashion schools. Once this network was formed, punk’s embrace of reggae elevated Jamaican music into the British mainstream as well. Similarly, New York’s downtown art scene supported Bronx hip-hop before many African American radio stations took rap seriously.

In the language of contemporary marketing, “subculture” has come to mean little more than “niche consumer segment.” A large portion of contemporary consumerism is built on countercultural and subcultural aesthetics. Formerly antisocial looks like punk, hippie, surfer, and biker are now sold as mainstream styles in every American shopping mall.

“Artist” is not an occupation—it’s an honorific title. All humans are creators in some capacity, whether whistling during housework, doodling in classroom notebooks, or making memes about the day’s celebrity foibles. This urge may even arise from a so-called creative gene in our DNA. But only a gifted few will combine their creativity with enough expertise to ever produce anything that earns admiration from others.

The most original artworks violate norms, and if they fail to attract critical notice, artists can fall to very low status. Rousseau spent years as a laughingstock, having to retrieve his own canvases from the garbage. This is why most creators take a less risky, entrepreneurial attitude toward art: harmonizing others’ radical inventions with more established conventions to expand the potential market.

This poses a logistical problem for creators: until they are accepted as high-status artists, transgressive behavior may be met with social disapproval and low status. “Matisse and Picasso in 1900,” theorist René Girard reminds us, “were considered incompetent by 99 per cent of their contemporaries.”

This is why the story of art tends to be dialectical. Instead of slow, incremental changes to methods and concepts, art movements quickly swing from one extreme position to another. The social realist school of painting promoted the idea that art should work to support revolutionary politics. The next generation, the abstract expressionists, demolished the social realist approach by refusing to use representational forms that could be used for propaganda. Then the pop artists rejected the abstract expressionists’ purism by adding elements of commercial kitsch to the canvas. A decade later, minimalists renounced pop’s colorful media references to make the most reductionist art possible.

What smooths the path for “irritating” art to win the approval of larger audiences? Again, the answer is status.

Beyonce and Kanye and Taylor Swift

Throughout part 2 we’ve seen how status struggles within and between classes, subcultures, and artistic movements create new conventions, sensibilities, and artifacts—and how the resulting cachet helps these ideas influence broader society.

Very little knowledge is required to read the status meanings of a giant mansion, a stretch limousine, or an oversized gold watch. The avant-garde, at the other extreme, relies on ideas of great symbolic complexity to erect fences between erudite allies and hopeless philistines. Full understanding of these inventions may require access to education, money, and leisure time, but the distinction emerges in the realm of symbols referencing other symbols, not simply in the direct display of acquisition costs. There emerges, then, a clear connection between signaling costs and the symbolic complexity of the resulting convention. This relationship can be mapped on a spectrum, from pure economic costs to pure cultural costs, with “semieconomic” costs in the middle (where wealth is not the direct signaling cost, but assists in acquiring the knowledge to decode the symbol).

This is not to say that all status seekers make important contributions to the expansion of human consciousness. Most aspiring artists secure their desired level of status through repeating others’ inventions. But in societies that value originality, influence, and mystery, many people will attempt to attain high status through the creation of subversive ideas.

The role of status in spurring creativity doesn’t mean humans make art only for status purposes. Artists can create for altruism, for God, for “the people,” for the sheer joy of creation. The novelist Franz Kafka felt he had no choice but to pursue his craft: “I am made of literature, and cannot be anything else.”

Jean Baudrillard complained that avant-garde art can “parody this world, illustrate it, simulate it, alter it” but it “never disturbs the order, which is also its own.” Status-driven cultural invention tends to be rebellious but not revolutionary. Truly radical art forms would not just provide established elites with new status symbols but change which groups are considered elite in the first place.

The modernist poet Octavio Paz stated in the early 1970s, “Rebellion has turned into procedure, criticism into rhetoric, transgression into ceremony. Negation is no longer creative.”

Oscar Wilde put it: fashion is “a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.”

Rogers noticed that adoptions progressed in sequence through five distinct groups, which he called innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards.

Widespread change takes place only once conservative majorities feel secure that switching won’t damage their status.

most people seek to participate publicly in new trends only where status value becomes obviously positive.

The ancient fashion trend for Tyrian purple, then, had less to do with an intrinsic human preference for those particular wavelengths of light and more about cachet. The emperor desired purple, because the bold color served as an exclusive marker.

Invention may arise anywhere in society, but its broader diffusion requires a boost of cachet. In needing exclusive goods and practices, high-status individuals are attracted to stylistic or technological innovations, precisely because they emerge, by definition, among a small number of adopters. This is where status seeking first intertwines with the diffusion of innovations. Innovativeness—the willingness to try out new things—increases as one moves up the status hierarchy from the middle tiers.

Status also explains why innovativeness is found at the bottom of society as well. Outsiders, exiles, and misfits don’t worry about the social risks of trying new things, because they have little status to lose. The principle of cachet, however, means that low-status convention-breaking is viewed as “deviance” and may not inspire any immediate imitation. High-status convention-breaking, on the other hand, kicks off emulation and becomes understood as a noble act of innovation.

“When the movies came,” writes the media theorist Marshall McLuhan, “the entire pattern of American life went on the screen as a nonstop ad. Whatever any actor or actress wore or used or ate was such an ad as had never been dreamed of.”

“Punk” scared away radio stations, so an executive at Sire Records asked radio stations to call aggressive young bands New Wave instead. Americans in the 1990s loathed European “techno,” so Spin magazine rechristened it “electronica.”

The American lower middle class bought TVs not just to be entertained but to signal economic success, which seems to explain why so many families placed their first TV sets on pedestals in their living rooms.

Mexico!

The fundamental human desire for status continues to direct imitation upward. All that has changed is that the cultural capital of urban, cosmopolitan groups includes knowledge of lower-status lifestyles. A conspicuous example is that middle-class white Americans must prove familiarity with Black culture, a phenomenon that drives multiple sectors of the creative economy. When Tommy Hilfiger wanted to sell his brand’s preppy clothing in the early 1990s, he took the advice of the rap impresario Russell Simmons and first targeted African Americans rather than the preppies themselves.

For centuries the wealthy took pride in their plumpness, as it signaled easy access to large quantities of food. When this bodily distinction disappeared with the expansion of potato farming and industrial food production, the rich abandoned rounder body types and became obsessed with exercise and nutrition.

As the indie rock cliché goes, “I used to like that band.” The early adoption of a popular trend suggests many virtues—individualism, bravery, being an exemplar. In the long run, elites make the same choices as the masses, but they make them much faster.

In pre-Columbian Mexico, drinking chocolate was an exclusive privilege of royals and the bravest Aztec warriors. European conquistadores learned the practice and brought it home, and soon their aristocratic employers indulged in the daily habit of drinking hot chocolate prepared in silver pots. By the mid-seventeenth century, chocolate was a clear “marker of opulence.”

As part of knighthood in eighteenth-century England, men received a pound of chocolate.

On the book review site Goodreads, scores tend to go down over time for prize-winning books, as the bandwagon effect brings in readers who may have less patience for literary complexity.

High-status adoption of a new convention—for distinction Early adopters’ embrace of that convention—as emulation of their status superiors Early majority reinvention and simplification—to follow an emerging social norm Late majority imitation—to avoid losing normal status Laggards’ passive adoption—without intention.

Fashion is a never-ending process of “chase and flight.” Low-status individuals chase high-status individuals by imitating their conventions, which forces elites to flee to new ones.

When asked to respond to elitist criticism of her schmaltzy music, Celine Dion proudly proclaimed, “[Our concerts have] been sold out for four years. The audience is my answer.”

In the 1970s, Kentucky Fried Chicken ran an advertising campaign in Japan making the dubious claim that Americans ate fried chicken on Christmas Day. Since that time, eating a Christmas bucket of KFC has become a Japanese holiday tradition.

True!?

Older functional goods used by the rich (e.g., a waxed cotton rain jacket in faded olive) are “classier” than practical innovations (e.g., Gore-Tex in bright red). Historical value enables classics to always be in good taste and rise above fashion, making them logical choices for risk-averse, middle-status individuals.

The canon shifts each year to accommodate the latest changes in contemporary culture. When the Beatles best set the paradigm for pop music, Rolling Stone named their landmark 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band as the greatest of all time. But in 2020 Rolling Stone revised its Top 500 Albums list to better recognize the musical contributions of artists beyond the white male rock oeuvre. The new list dropped Sgt. Pepper to number 24 and put Marvin Gaye’s seminal soul record What’s Going On—arguably a more influential work on the direction of contemporary music—in the top spot.