How are pets being used as status symbols to display social position and
wealth? This paper seeks to theoretically examine pet owners and their use of
animals to convey a message of social status, position and wealth. This will be
done through an application of theoretical constructs by Veblen, Marx, and
Bourdieu and applications to concepts of consumerism, status, commodities and
distinction. While the human-animal relationship has been investigated in terms
of the human benefits of physical and mental health, stress reduction, child
surrogacy, loneliness reduction and more, there have been fewer investigations
of pets as social status symbols.
This thesis creates a more inclusive theoretical approach to commodities
being used as status symbols. After a historical look at how the function of pets
has evolved in relation to humans, the more inclusive theory is applied to real
world examples of pets in modern affluent societies such as pet luxury items,
designer breeds, market segmentation, and mass availability of those products.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-3068 |
| Date | 15 May 2009 |
| Creators | Plemons, April |
| Contributors | McIntosh, Alex, Sell, Jane |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Thesis, text |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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