According to research by Standard Life bank, two out of three Brits in their 30s and 40s suffer from status anxiety about their homes, prompting TV consumer psychologist Benjamin Fry to attempt a more detailed diagnosis. They are apparently experiencing improvenza, which is touted not as the disease but as the potential cure, involving as it does reconfiguring the work-life balance and, as often as not, renovating rather than moving.
The notion of status anxiety as a defining modern malaise has been around for some time but was popularised by British author Alain de Botton in his 2004 book of the same name. US trendspotter Faith Popcorn has since argued that it is moral status anxiety that increasingly defines our attitudes. She and others have been predicting the end of conspicuous consumption, to be replaced by conspicuous austerity ("less is the new more"), thrifting (opting for low-cost, low-profile living) or conscientious consumption, whereby our individual standing is defined by how far we manage to combine spending and leisure pursuits with self-improvement and charitable works.
Amsterdam-based Trendwatching.com, which also singles out status as the key driver of new consumer behaviours, this year upped the stakes by coining the expression status despair to describe the awful realisation, for example, that a fellow oligarch has a more sumptuously fitted-out private jet than you. Journalists have identified other manifestations of this new angst, ranging from yacht envy to bag envy. The latter, says media strategist Tracy Hofman, can be countered by what she calls status flair, "the thrill that resonates when you realise that the quilted Chanel handbag you acquired in 1990 is now back in fashion!"
Trendwatching claims that, in an experience economy, hierarchies based purely on spending power are outdated, supplanted by so-called status spheres: different areas of activity such as ‘participation’, ‘giving’ and ‘experiencing’ from which individuals derive self-validation and peer recognition. In the same way those physical status symbols - visible, tangible purchases for display - are giving way to status stories, told not by manufacturers but by consumers bragging to other consumers, presumably by word-of-mouth and by way of blogging and viralling, about their personalised adventure holidays, their web-presence, not-for-profit investments, eco-credentials, etc.
Send your favourite buzzwords, jargon and new and exotic usages to tony.thorne@kcl.ac.uk
blog comments powered by
