{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","uuid":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","normalized_title":"timeforthingslaborleisureandtheriseofmassconsumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","isbns":["9780674250529","9780674250536","9780674979512"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":355,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%20for%20Things%20Labor%2C%20Leisure%2C%20and%20the%20Rise%20of%20Mass%20Consumption","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/search"},"page":{"printed_page":287,"pdf_page":295,"physical_index":295,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"e24e251e323aea793baf411a655a895786066a631de5a79ec7c270a41c9830a3"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"49. This point is made by Avner Ofer (2006, p. 279), who notes that “widely difused consumer goods confer distinction only temporarily if at all” and that “only at the more costly end of cars and housing is consumption a prime means of signaling status.” Ofer notes, as an aside, that Vance Packard’s hugely influential 1959 jeremiad against status competition, The Status Seekers, contains only one brief chapter, out of twenty-four, about conspicuous consumption.\n\n50. Samual Bowles and Yongjin Park, in a 2005 paper, claim, on the basis of analysis of data on work hours in ten countries between 1963 and 1998, that work hours are predicted by the degree of inequality. They interpret the correlation between inequality and work hours as evidence for a “Veblen efect.” Their argument is that higher inequality means that the material trappings of the wealthy are further removed from the mass of the population, and this leads to increased willingness to work, so as to earn more income and “catch up” with the consumption of the emulated class. I find their argument unconvincing because they use quite historically limited data as a basis for a very general claim about economic behavior. As we have seen, the supply curve of labor in the late nineteenth century (ironically, more or less at the time Veblen was writing Theory of the Leisure Class) was backward curving. And yet that period in American history was one of extreme inequality. Why, then, were late nineteenth-century American workers not willing to work more hours to fund pecuniary emulation? Moreover, there are many alternative explanations for why inequality should be correlated with higher hours. For example, higher inequality generally indicates a situation in which capital is more powerful than labor. Since capitalists tend to prefer longer hours, the correlation between hours and inequality could just indicate the degree to which capitalists are able to enforce their will.\n\n51. De Certeau (1984, p. 31) sets up the opposition between consumption and production in the following terms: “In reality, a rationalized, expansionist, centralized, spectacular, and clamorous production is confronted by an entirely diferent kind of production, called ‘consumption’, and characterized by its ruses, its fragmentation . . . its poaching, its clandestine nature, its tireless but quiet activity, in short by its quasi-invisibility, since it shows itself not in its own products . . . but in an art of using those imposed upon them.”\n\n52. Desublimation, according to Herbert Marcuse (1964), is the reversal of the Freudian process of sublimation, by which desire, under early capitalism, became channeled into work. To facilitate mass industrial production under capitalism, desire first had to be “unleashed” and then attached to commodity objects.\n\n53. Economists have argued that advertising simply serves to provide consumers with information and has little efect on tastes (Nelson 1974, 1975).\n\n54. It is possible, however, that advertising has the aggregate efect of biasing people toward material accumulation rather than reducing work time.\n\n55. The preference for stable work hours is a contingent matter. It made some sense for mid-century businesses engaged in industrial mass production, as plants had to be in continual operation to cover their expenses (Piore and Sabel, 1986). Under current postindustrial conditions, however, businesses have shifted toward flexible hours. It should be noted that the flexibility demanded by the “gig economy” reflects the preferences of business rather than of workers.\n\nNotes to Pages 37–41\n\n287","previous_page":286,"next_page":288}