Elizabeth Currid-Halkett is an American academic and author. She is the James Irvine Chair of Urban and Regional Planning and Professor of Public Policy at the University of Southern California. [1]
Elizabeth Currid-Halkett is an American academic and author. She is the James Irvine Chair of Urban and Regional Planning and Professor of Public Policy at the University of Southern California. [1]
Currid-Halkett received her PhD in urban planning from Columbia University. She received a Bachelor's of Arts in Creative Writing and Professional Writing and a Master's of Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University. [1]
Currid-Halkett is a scholar of urban studies and economic geography. Her research documents the importance of the arts to the urban economy and the role of cultural capital in defining and perpetuating class inequality in America. In a 2017 National Public Radio Hidden Brain interview with Currid-Halkett, Shankar Vedantam summarizes her research as a study of the social networks of elites. [2]
Currid-Halkett's 2007 book, The Warhol Economy, documents how artists, designers, musicians and other creative workers are essential to the vibrancy of New York City. She interviewed dozens of people who work in creative industries from the newly established to well known names including Shepard Fairey, Diane Von Furstenberg, Quincy Jones and Ryan McGinness [3] In her research, she argues that the social life of creative workers is instrumental to their careers and to the creative economy. Currid-Halkett extended this argument to a comparative analysis with Los Angeles where she and MIT professor Sarah Williams looked at Getty Images photographic data of thousands of entertainment events to track the social life of creative people in a project entitled "The Geography of Buzz". [4] In a 2014 paper in PLOS One, Currid-Halkett and Williams used cell phone data and social media to track and analyze the creative process of New York City fashion industry workers. [5]
Currid-Halkett's 2010 book, Starstruck, studies the economics of celebrity, in particular using social network analysis to study the relationship between social life and star power. Currid-Halkett argues that the A-list inhabits a closed network, or what is termed a clique (graph theory), leaving out everyone else. [2] [6]
Currid-Halkett's 2017 book, The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class, analyzes the role of culture in signifying class in America today. [7] Drawing from Thorstein Veblen's original treatise, The Theory of the Leisure Class , Currid-Halkett argues that unlike conventional "conspicuous consumption" today's elite, whom she calls the "aspirational class" spend on "inconspicuous consumption", expensive but largely immaterial investments. [8] [9] This "cultural elite" use their wealth towards goods and services such as education, domestic services and health care, all of which save time and shore up privilege for themselves and their offspring. [10] [11] Currid-Halkett argues that this cultural capital contributes to growing inequality in America. Some commentators have remarked that Currid-Halkett's aspirational class is part and parcel of the contemporary class and culture war in America. [12] [13]
Currid-Halkett's work has also appeared and been featured in mainstream publications including NPR, The New York Times , Los Angeles Times , The Wall Street Journal , The New Yorker and The Economist . [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19]
Currid-Halkett's work has been noted for its detailed documentation of the importance of the arts and culture to the economy. On The Warhol Economy James Surowiecki writes in The New Yorker, "…everyone knows that art and culture help make New York a great place to live. But Currid goes much further, showing that the culture industry creates tremendous economic value in its own right." [20] Currid-Halkett's 2017 book The Sum of Small Things has been reviewed as a convincing account of the role of consumption and cultural practices in today's growing inequality. [10] The Economist named The Sum of Small Things one of the Books of the Year 2017. [21] David Brooks argued in The New York Times that Currid-Halkett's study of invisible cultural signals offers another means to understand class barriers in America. [12] Simon Kuper of The Financial Times remarked, "This is the cultural elite — or what Elizabeth Currid-Halkett..calls the "aspirational class". Her book The Sum of Small Things anatomises it using fascinating American consumption data….Her intellectual ancestor Thorstein Veblen, in his 1899 study The Theory of the Leisure Class, portrayed Wasps frittering away money, but today's cultural elite is engaged in a ruthless project to reproduce its social position… No wonder the key rite of cultural-elite conversation has become Trump-dissing… And so the cultural wars that got him elected rage on." [10]
Others have challenged Currid-Halkett's critique arguing that the cultural capital she lauds as a signifier of the "aspirational class" may not be desired by other groups. A critique in Times Higher Education challenged that it is too early to tell what changing consumption patterns might imply. [22]
In 2019, Currid-Halkett became mother of a son, who suffers from Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). He received a gene therapy treatment. The first of its kind for DMD.
A civilization is any complex society characterized by the development of the state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond natural spoken language.
Joseph Alois Schumpeter was an Austrian political economist. He served briefly as Finance Minister of Austria in 1919. In 1932, he emigrated to the United States to become a professor at Harvard University, where he remained until the end of his career, and in 1939 obtained American citizenship.
Meritocracy is the notion of a political system in which economic goods or political power are vested in individual people based on ability and talent, rather than wealth or social class. Advancement in such a system is based on performance, as measured through examination or demonstrated achievement. Although the concept of meritocracy has existed for centuries, the first known use of the term was by sociologist Alan Fox in the journal Socialist Commentary in 1956. It was then popularized by sociologist Michael Dunlop Young, who used the term in his dystopian political and satirical book The Rise of the Meritocracy in 1958. Today, the term is often utilised to refer to social systems, in which personal advancement and success are primarily attributed to an individual's capabilities and merits.
Thorstein Bunde Veblen was an American economist and sociologist who, during his lifetime, emerged as a well-known critic of capitalism.
Consumerism is a social and economic order in which the goals of many individuals include the acquisition of goods and services beyond those that are necessary for survival or for traditional displays of status. Consumerism has historically existed in many societies, with modern consumerism originating in Western Europe before the Industrial Revolution and becoming widespread around 1900. In 1899, a book on consumerism published by Thorstein Veblen, called The Theory of the Leisure Class, examined the widespread values and economic institutions emerging along with the widespread "leisure time" at the beginning of the 20th century. In it, Veblen "views the activities and spending habits of this leisure class in terms of conspicuous and vicarious consumption and waste. Both relate to the display of status and not to functionality or usefulness."
In Marxist philosophy, the term commodity fetishism describes the economic relationships of production and exchange as being social relationships that exist among things and not as relationships that exist among people. As a form of reification, commodity fetishism presents economic value as inherent to the commodities, and not as arising from the workforce, from the human relations that produced the commodity, the goods and the services.
Democratization, or democratisation, is the structural government transition from an authoritarian government to a more democratic political regime, including substantive political changes moving in a democratic direction.
A Veblen good is a type of luxury good, named after American economist Thorstein Veblen, for which the demand increases as the price increases, in apparent contradiction of the law of demand, resulting in an upward-sloping demand curve. The higher prices of Veblen goods may make them desirable as a status symbol in the practices of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure. A product may be a Veblen good because it is a positional good, something few others can own.
Social stratification refers to a society's categorization of its people into groups based on socioeconomic factors like wealth, income, race, education, ethnicity, gender, occupation, social status, or derived power. As such, stratification is the relative social position of persons within a social group, category, geographic region, or social unit.
Arjun Appadurai is an Indian-American anthropologist recognized as a major theorist in globalization studies. In his anthropological work, he discusses the importance of the modernity of nation-states and globalization. He is the former University of Chicago professor of anthropology and South Asian Languages and Civilizations, Humanities Dean of the University of Chicago, director of the city center and globalization at Yale University, and the Education and Human Development Studies professor at NYU Steinhardt School of Culture.
Tyler Cowen is an American economist, columnist and blogger. He is a professor at George Mason University, where he holds the Holbert L. Harris chair in the economics department. He hosts the economics blog Marginal Revolution, together with co-author Alex Tabarrok. Cowen and Tabarrok also maintain the website Marginal Revolution University, a venture in online education.
Criticism of capitalism is a critique of political economy that involves the rejection of, or dissatisfaction with the economic system of capitalism and its outcomes. Criticisms typically range from expressing disagreement with particular aspects or outcomes of capitalism to rejecting the principles of the capitalist system in its entirety.
Social movement theory is an interdisciplinary study within the social sciences that generally seeks to explain why social mobilization occurs, the forms under which it manifests, as well as potential social, cultural, political, and economic consequences, such as the creation and functioning of social movements.
Anti-consumerism is a sociopolitical ideology that is opposed to consumerism, the continual buying and consuming of material possessions. Anti-consumerism is concerned with the private actions of business corporations in pursuit of financial and economic goals at the expense of the public welfare, especially in matters of environmental protection, social stratification, and ethics in the governing of a society. In politics, anti-consumerism overlaps with environmental activism, anti-globalization, and animal-rights activism; moreover, a conceptual variation of anti-consumerism is post-consumerism, living in a material way that transcends consumerism.
A superstar is someone who has great popular appeal and is widely known, prominent, or successful in their field. Celebrities referred to as "superstars" may include individuals who work as actors, musicians, athletes, and other media-based professions.
Popular culture is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a society at a given point in time. Popular culture also encompasses the activities and feelings produced as a result of interaction with these dominant objects. The primary driving forces behind popular culture, especially when speaking of Western popular cultures, are the media, mass appeal, marketing and capitalism; and it is produced by what philosopher Theodor Adorno refers to as the "culture industry".
Sean Greenhalgh is a music producer and multi-instrumentalist best known as the drummer in the band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Sean is featured in The Warhol Economy: How Fashion Art & Music Drive New York City in regard to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's rise to blog fame in 2005.
Paradox of Prosperity is a term used widely in many instances in economics, social theory and general commentary. In inter-generational analysis, Professor Gilbert N. M. O. Morris defines the term through an analysis of the familial dynamics and social proclivities of what Tom Brokaw has called the "Greatest Generation". Morris argues that:
"A paradox of prosperity is revealed and shown to be stable in the cycles of economic advancement between generations. I would put the matter this way: If one accepts, for example, that Mr. Brokaw's 'Greatest Generation' were characterised by prudence, diligence, and patriotism in deed rather than word, that very generation produced its opposite in the generation that followed it. That is to say, I have found it repeated across the ages and across cultures, that the more diligent a previous generation, as a natural propensity, the more licentious the generation that follows. Invariably therefore, the generation that exhibits the more cogent properties of character for the best sort of citizenship fails to produce a generation of the same or similar characteristics."
Aeon is a digital magazine of ideas, philosophy and culture. Publishing new articles every weekday, Aeon describes itself as a publication which "asks the biggest questions and finds the freshest, most original answers, provided by world-leading authorities on science, philosophy and society." The magazine is published by Aeon Media Group, which has offices in London, New York, and Melbourne.
Discrimination of excellence is the unjust treatment of outperformers and overachievers. Discrimination against outperformers includes the critique of unfair treatment in non-merit-based admissions practices, degree conferral or promotion standards. Unfair treatment of outperformers occurs when focusing away from merit or biases lead to economic inefficiency or suboptimal choice in the wake of intransparent, arbitrary or nepotistic decision-making. Discrimination against excellent students during admissions is thematized in Ivy League admission debates and legally scrutinized in the context of individuals outperforming on standardized college admission tests but not being admitted. Discrimination of excellence evidence is found in most outstanding students failing a PhD degree conferral and intransparent promotion criteria systemically biasing against outperformers and overachievers.
