ABSTRACT
The desire for success is taken as such an unproblematic aspect of most people’s lives that it remains surprising that so little detailed research has been carried out on how people evaluate it. Success is assumed to be read off by the possession of status markers, by the capacity to consume or to be wasteful which inevitably becomes both its measure and the imperative for its achievement. But, as Campbell has observed, it is difficult to see why either of these should imply that ‘others’ had been suitably impressed nor why this alone should be fundamental to the need for people to succeed (Campbell 1993).
