Keeping Up with the Joneses - 9780812236866

Keeping Up with the JonesesEnvy in American Consumer Society, 189-193\nAuthor(s): Susan J. Matt\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, United States\nImprint: University of Pennsylvania Press\nISBN-13: 9780812236866, 978-0812236866\nSynopsis\nA century ago many Americans condemned envy as a destructive emotion and a sin. Today few Americans expect criticism when they express envy, and some commentators maintain that the emotion drives the economy. This shift in attitude is Susan Matt's central concern. Keeping up with the Joneses: Envy in American Consumer Society, [tel] examines a key transition in the meaning of envy for the American middle class. Although people certainly have experienced envy throughout history, the expansion of the consumer economy at the turn of the twentieth century dramatically reshaped the social role of the emotion. Matt looks at how different groups within the middle class-men in white-collar jobs, bourgeois women, farm families, a.