Signalling status: Occupations and competitive spending

Recent work in cultural class analysis emphasises the role of economic and non-economic capitals as a source of advantage in competitive games that individuals engage in in their social space. Strategic and competitive consumption for the sake of survival (Warde, 2014) is characteristic for professions, especially where signalling status and financial success is part of the game (Rivera, 2012). Prior research shows professions as social collectivities where status matters (Abbott, 1989) and elite business and management domains have distinctive pressures for signalling status (Friedman and Laurison, 2019; Rivera, 2012) which impact inequalities (Ridgeway, 2012). Granular analysis of consumption patterns across occupations is important for revealing differences in the accumulation of capitals (Bourdieu, 1984; Flemmen et al.,2018), and there is evidence of differences in capital-signalling between professional groups (Pavlisa & Scott, 2022). However, the pressures for status-signalling within professional groups remain under-explored.
The paper examines status-signalling expenditure across the professional/managerial groups, using the largest British expenditure survey - Living Costs and Food Survey (2009-2016). I explore the magnitudes of agents’ ‘co-movement’, or conformity, in their status-signalling expenditure. In professional groups associated with higher rewards from status-signalling consumption, increases in status-signalling are more strongly associated with conformity to peers than with own income growth.
This study has implications for understanding inequalities between and within the occupational categories of social structures. It suggests that the social and cultural conditionings within the professional domains, including the ‘push for status-signalling’, propel inequalities based on social differences in esteem and respect, with potential for class reproduction.