The concept of "conspicuous consumption" denotes:

A. Fetishism of commodities.

B. People want to show that they are simple-living.

C. People want to show others what they are consuming.

D. People have access to commodities.

E. Tragedy of Culture.

Choose the correct answer from the options given below:

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UGC NET Paper 2: Sociology 1 Oct 2022 Shift 2

Answer 1

The concept of "Conspicuous Consumption" denotes people want to show others what they are consuming.Important Points

The term conspicuous consumption is a term given by Thorstein Veblen in his book, "The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions".
Conspicuous consumption generally refers to the behavioral characteristics of the new rich social class that emerged from capital accumulation during the Industrial Revolution.
This is generally done by new rich people to show the general public their wealth and luxury and thereby attain a higher status in society.

Additional Information

Fetishism of commodities is a term used by Karl Marx In his book Capital.
Commodity fetishism is an extreme form of alienation induced by the structures of commodity exchange in a capitalist society.
He explains this by taking the example of a commodity for instance a coat which has both use value and exchange value.
The exchange will not take into account the specific characteristics of the coat, the labor involved or the social relations involved in the production of the coat.
Labor power is also treated as a commodity or a thing. Thus under capitalism, everything is bought and sold and labor power is also considered a thing.
The tragedy of culture is a term used by George Simmel.
George Simmel was a classical sociologist born in Germany in 1858 and died in 1918.
Simmel argues that there is the tragedy of culture happens when objective culture comes to dominate the subjective culture of the individual.
Objective culture involves those objects that people produce (artifacts, scientific inventions, technologies, and so on) that become part of the culture.
On the other hand, subjective or individual culture refers to the capacity of the individual to produce, absorb and control the elements of objective culture.
In other words, the tragedy of culture occurs when the individual’s will and self-development become submissive to the product of their own creativity.