Representations of nouveau riche consumption, class reproduction, and the discourse of civility

Jennifer Smith Maguire

Chapter 37 in Research Handbook on the Sociology of Consumption, 2026, pp 426-435 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter explores the continued role of civility as a moral discourse of consumption. Drawing on the work of Norbert Elias, it examines media representations of nouveau riche (NR) consumption aimed at the Western professional-managerial class (PMC). A thematic analysis focuses on two frames—vulgarity and civility—through which NR practices are presented as more or less legitimate. Both frames reproduce the primacy and prestige of Western PMC codes of civility as forms of cultural capital, directing them outwards against NR challengers. Ascriptions of NR vulgarity and (conditional, aspirational) civility construct a framework of ‘civilized stratification’ that legitimates hierarchization without jarring against PMC omnivorous tastes and cosmopolitan values, while obscuring anxieties about shifting global concentrations of wealth and power. Notions of civility thus continue to serve as levers in policing shifting group boundaries, establishing legitimate preserves for snobbishness, if not also crude racism and colonial condescension.

Keywords: Civility; Class; Nouveau riche; Cultural capital; Norbert Elias; Vulgarity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035310500
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