ABSTRACT
This chapter illuminates the multilayered nature of social class and the underlying mechanisms that continue to shape social organization. It discusses the history of class and consumer behavior. Max Weber expanded on Karl Marx's economic notion proposing a tripartite concept of social class that integrates three separate but related mechanisms—the economic class, the social status, and the power. Holt describes the consumption styles of six dimensions of taste that are inscribed in habitus. The six include material versus formal aesthetics; referential versus critical interpretations; materialism versus idealism; local versus cosmopolitan tastes; communal versus individual form subjectivity; and autotelic versus self-actualizing leisure. Downward mobility constrains economic capacity to pursue desired lifestyles. Downward mobility can stem from critical incidents such as job loss and sustained unemployment, onset of chronic illness or injury, natural disaster and loss of home, or divorce and family breakup—that can also mean loss of the home.
