“If your shoes are raggedy you get talked about”: Symbolic and material dimensions of adolescent social status and health

Abstract

This paper examines the interaction of symbolic and material dimensions of social status for African American adolescents and its relationship with blood pressure. Mixed ethnographic methods were used to develop cultural models of social status for urban African American teens in a predominantly African American lower-income community west of Chicago. Resting blood pressure and covariate data were collected, as well as standardized measures of perceived stress and social standing. Findings show that, adjusting for covariates, adolescents' consumption of symbolic status goods is significantly associated with their blood pressure, dependent upon parental economic resources. The political economy of status consumption, the underlying contexts of racial and economic inequality, and the implications of these findings for health disparities are discussed.