(Skeggs, 2013: 23)
Speaking about such contemporary perceptions of middle-classness, Currid-Halkett classifies this new consumer ideology as that of an “aspirational class”, an elite yet widespread grouping of mostly middle- and upper middleclass urban dwellers who value informed over conspicuous consumption (2018: 18). Aspirational consumption, like aspirational labor, is a way to inscribe oneself in social relations through ideological fantasies of class belonging. The aspirational class views consumption as a future investment for becoming an improved person and moving up the social ladder. It crafts itself primarily through symbolic and cultural capital rather than income, as it is the where of money spent that counts instead of the money itself.
The aspirational class is motivated by self-confident values and is actively choosing a way of life through an excessive process of information gathering and forming opinions and values, some of which involve money but many of which rest on cultural capital instead.
(Currid-Halkett, 2018: 19)
Curation provides the aspirational class advanced opportunities for storytelling, which is a typical means for negotiating forms of symbolic capital. Storytelling is a trope attached to the originator of the story and it “appeals to humans’ demand for a meaning in life as stories engage emotions, stimulate fantasies, and thoughts” (Mei, Hågensen and Kristiansen, 2020: 94); the more unique the stories, the more captivating the originator of the story appears. To use our initial example, a curated sock that is local and authentic ofers a story to tell the self and others, and thus shapes (perceptions of) identity. As we will see in Chapter 5, an Airbnb cooking session with an Italian grandmother provides a story that is authentic and shareable, it is not “random” cooking, but rather a recipe based on the experience of a historical community. The luxury fashion brands in Chapter 4 tell quirky and ofbeat stories, and the life coaches in Chapter 6 encourage their clients and trainees to curate their identities based on their “true” selves. Curation, in this sense, is a cultural and economic rationality that occupies a structure of feeling, to use Raymond Williams’ term (1977), in contemporary capitalism by expanding the imaginary of self-aestheticization and the ideal of the self as a work of art (Featherstone, 2021; Skeggs, 2013). In the post-2010s of digital abundance, socks with personalities function as what Lury refers to as “prothesis”, marking an inscription of the self that operationalizes one’s personality in the marketplace of identities (Lury, 2013).
The aspirational class is reflexive insofar as it is expected to think through various consumption practices vis-a-vis opportunities for self-making, or to consume as a means of self-personalization. To “drink almond milk instead of regular milk”, for example, means to engage in consumption that has internalized a certain social awareness of animal rights and assumed ecofriendly knowledge, which in turn becomes a marker of social status (Currid-Halkett, 2018: 22). In this regard, aspirational consumers are the ideal candidate group for buying into the curatorial narrative, as this narrative provides a story about one’s self-image, what the business studies scholars Pine and Gilmore refer to as “purchasing on the basis of conforming to self-image” (2007: 65). Self-image here becomes a craft and quest for the aspirational consumer, who understands that the more uniquely diference is managed, the more possibilities for social distinction. Curated consumption, in other words, serves as the foundation for a new consumer ideology in the disorienting context of communicative capitalism.
68
Homo Curatorius