Probably inelastic pricing upon “special things” show or reveal to all of us norms and ideals we idealise. Holidays at all costs are the way we fulfil our desire to have a work-life stability, even if such amounts do not exist. An expensive wedding is the way of marking the big event as meaningful, mainly because expenditure signals expenditure.
In the society where almost anything can be bought or marketed, our values plus ideals can be commodified too.
THE VALUE OF VALUES
Yet at exactly what point can all of us say that the amount we spend equates to enjoy, filial piety plus familial loyalty? To put it differently, to what extent can we put the monetary value on something intangible?
The temptation to count is always there, as a result of living in a capitalist, technocratic society. We have been socialised to think that more and new is definitely better – so much so that even particular versions of the afterlife are places in order to brand-signal as well , with shops marketing joss paper replicas of the latest Mac-book Pros and apple iphones .
At the same time, I do not think the answer is to totally detach ourselves through rituals, whether spiritual or otherwise. Rituals plus ceremony are a core part of what makes us human. Our collective partaking in traditions create forms of solidarity within and in between groups.
What we have to be careful regarding, and what we have to inquire ourselves, is whether spending truly symbolises our ideals, or whether it is our way of one-upping each other.
Terence Heng is a senior lecturer in Sociology at the University of Liverpool, UK, where he is also an associate at the Center for Architecture as well as the Visual Arts.