Economic Inequality and Luxury

Abstract

Economic inequality is often associated with luxury. This is because an individual’s ability to acquire luxury goods and services depends on their access to economic resources. However, it is necessary to recognise that luxury can take marketised and sociocultural forms. Access to sociocultural forms of luxury is not dependent on the individual consumer’s economic resources. This chapter adopts a critical luxury studies approach to explore the relationship between luxury, manifest primarily in the form of luxury goods and services, and economic inequality. However, by recognising sociocultural and marketised forms of luxury, an understanding of the complexity of the relationship between luxury and economic inequality is achieved. Furthermore, it is argued that economic growth, while increasing the scale of inequality, has also lifted many people out of poverty and into the ranks of luxury-brand consumers. Importantly, it is suggested that focussing on luxury as a signifier of economic inequality is a distraction that conceals a lack of political will to address the causes of poverty and deprivation that are embedded in the neoliberal market economic system.