Sum of Small Things

In today's world, the leisure class has been replaced by a new elite Highly educated and defined by cultural capital rather than income bracket. In The Sum of Small Things, Elizabeth Currid-Halkett dubs this segment of society "the Aspirational Class" and discusses how, through deft decisions about education, health, parenting, and retirement, the Aspirational Class reproduces wealth and upward mobility, deepening the ever-wider class divide. Exploring the rise of the Aspirational Class, Currid-Halkett considers how much has changed since the 1899 publication of Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class. In that inflammatory classic, which coined the phrase "conspicuous consumption," Veblen described upper-class frivolities: men who used walking sticks for show, and women who bought silver flatware despite the effectiveness of cheaper aluminum utensils. Now, Currid-Halkett argues, the power of material goods as symbols of social position has diminished due to their accessibility. As a result, the Aspirational Class has altered its consumer habits away from overt materialism to more subtle expenditures that reveal status and knowledge. And these transformations influence how we all make choices.