{"id":31947,"date":"2011-12-26T12:32:11","date_gmt":"2011-12-26T17:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=31947"},"modified":"2013-11-09T04:48:48","modified_gmt":"2013-11-09T09:48:48","slug":"luxury-and-the-consumption-of-labor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/12\/26\/luxury-and-the-consumption-of-labor\/","title":{"rendered":"Luxury and the Consumption of Labor"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the last week of December, we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite posts from 2011. Originally\u00a0cross-posted at\u00a0Scientopia<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/em><\/p>\n

I came across this fascinating poster advertising tea at The Coffee Bean in Irvine, CA. \u00a0The ad features tea leaves balled up into small tea “pearls” and spilled into a person’s palm (text and analysis below):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Text:<\/p>\n

Three minutes to fragrant perfection.<\/p>\n

It takes a full day to hand-roll 17 ounces of our Jasmine Dragon Pearl Green Tea. \u00a0But in just three minutes you can watch these aromatic pearls unfurl gracefully into one of the world’s most soothing and delicious teas.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This ad suggests that others’ toil should enhance one’s experience of pleasure. \u00a0The fact that it takes a significant amount of human labor<\/em> to “hand-roll” tea leaves into balls — an action that is in no way asserted to change the taste of the tea — is supposed to make the tea more <\/em>appealing and not less. \u00a0We are supposed to enjoy not just the visual, but the fact that others worked hard to produce it for us. \u00a0A whole day of their labor for just three minutes of curly goodness.<\/p>\n

This is a rather stunning value pervading U.S. culture. \u00a0Luxury may be defined not only as pleasure, or as the consumption of the scarce, but as the “unfurling” of others’ hard work. \u00a0What could be more luxurious than the casual-and-fleeting enjoyment of the hard-and-long labor of others?<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the last week of December, we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite posts from 2011. Originally\u00a0cross-posted at\u00a0Scientopia. \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014 I came across this fascinating poster advertising tea at The Coffee Bean in Irvine, CA. \u00a0The ad features tea leaves balled up into small tea “pearls” and spilled into a person’s palm (text and analysis below): Text: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,36,329,2124,64,76],"class_list":["post-31947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-economics","tag-emotion","tag-foodagriculture","tag-globalization","tag-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31947"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58555,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31947\/revisions\/58555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}