Word: statuses
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Status Quo Favored...
Nevertheless, the book achieved bestseller status only eleven days after publication, and has received deferential critical attention as a serious sociological study. Actually, most of it is a rehash of what other academic private eyes have reported on the behavior of Americans, the modern world's most relentlessly observed and observing people. None of it is new; some of it is highly intriguing; and all of it is dedicated to the dubious proposition that such "status symbols" as gold-plated bathroom fixtures and air-conditioned doghouses threaten the American dream...
...times Packard is patently misinformed, as when he asserts that class structures are more flexible in Britain than in the U.S., and he over-sentimentalizes the American past, suggesting that only yesterday Horatio Alger was king. "Status striving" to him seems to be a modern menace, and he writes of it with scant mention of Thorstein ("conspicuous consumption") Veblen or of the massive, fascinating and often exhilarating social climbs described by Balzac, Stendhal, Jane Austen...
...basic point that U.S. class lines are hardening. In fact it suggests just the opposite-a continually changing social scene. At one point Packard himself concedes that the "American populace [is] arranged along a continuum [with] a series of bulges and contractions." Much of what Packard describes as status seeking is indeed foolish, and some of it may be evil; but much of it is also the result of man's human status, and the product of a free and mobile society. In a closed society where "everyone knows his place," people need not and often cannot strive...
...various professions. Pennsylvania-born Vance Packard himself has risen in that scale. He began as a newspaperman (42nd place), but he is now considered a sociologist (27th). He lives in New Canaan, Conn., in a twelve-room house (white frame), and has a Weimaraner, just about the highest-status dog available...