Status and Culture by David W. Marx
Status and Culture by David W. Marx
Why does culture change over time and how does it change and develop? As Marx tells it, he was reading through the literature and trying to make sense of it all when he realised that there was a key concept that linked everything he was seeing together - status.
It’s a fairly simple, stark but nevertheless wide ranging thesis that Marx lays out in the opening and he goes on to amply illustrate the idea and use it to explain a host of phenomenon.
The theory simply goes all societies organise themselves by status through culture and cultural objects which denote this status to everyone else. This is an always moving system of value as people are always trying to go up the status chain.
Marx doesn’t even think this is a bad thing. A self-conscious understanding of the game we all can’t help but play would help us to participate if not more effectively than at least with less anxiety.
The book is organised into four main parts; Status and the Individual looking at how this effects individuals. Status and Creativity looking at larger cultural trends. Status & Cultural Change looking at how change is effected by status. Status and Culture in the 21st Century looking mainly at how the internet remodelled how status and culture play out.
The Beatles mop tops open the book with a look at how a previously derided hairstyle from Berlin took the western world by storm and Marx illustrates the book with a dizzying number of examples. Why is purple the color of royalty? How did chocolate become ubiquitous, why are major chords happy and minor chords sad? Marx’s theory really lays bare social conventions that we pass over without a second thought.
The rise of subcultures in the last part especially I think help to shed light on our viral internet laced world.
On the internet there are more things, but fewer arrive with clear and stable status value.
Elsewhere Marx shows why style is often more important than content in societies something that is somewhat counterintuitive.
There is a reason taste focuses on “superficial” aesthetics rather than practical actions. People from very different backgrounds use the same screwdrivers, automotive lubricants, and kitty litter. Nonfunctional choices like ceramics, photographs, and rugs better reveal one’s internal preferences, because we can assume people’s choices reflect their deepest predilections.
Following on from this point we also see perhaps how this theory helps in interpreting the progress of changing styles in Architecture. The style of the rich the neo-classical style forming a sort of shorthand for Empire making in buildings exported from the West all over the world for example. The Problem of Taste in Architecture often presupposes styles as objectively better or worse a problem of their mis-understanding how style, taste and status are connected.
Finally Marx tells us;
Civilisation is fundamentally symbolic, and every choice communicates social position.
This book is a readable and insightful guide to living in a world full of status anxiety and is highly recommended.