[4.9
Reinforced by psychoanalytic and semiotic theory, explanations of possessions as
symbols have flourished. However, Spencer (1879/1893) in the nineteenth century and Blumberg
(1974) in the twentieth century have argued that the use of possessions as status symbols
should lose importance in more advanced societies. There is evidence that possessions in fact
do not function as status symbols. For example, Form and Stone (1957) studied the symbolism
used by persons in upper, middle, working and marginalized social classes to appraise .
strangers. They found classification by status to predominate but classification by power to be
nil. Surprisingly, possessions were less important for middle class subjects’ appraisals of
others’ status than they were for upper and working class subjects’ appraisals. Status
indicators judged unimportant or irrelevant for the appraisal of status included household
furnishings, income, house, and clothing.
Turner, Foa and Foa (1971) similarly found evidence that possessions did not function as
status symbols. They studied students’ judgements of equivalence between reinforcers, and
found status as a reinforcer to be most like love and least like goods or money. They surmised
that the important difference between status and possessions as reinforcers was that
possessions represent a zero-sum game, that is, the more one person gets, then the less
another person has; whereas, love and status both entail simultaneous possession by one’s self
and others. Thus, the economies of status and possessions are different, making their symbolic
equivalence doubtful.
However, Belk (1985a,b) has reviewed arguments that goods are increasingly used as
status symbols as social mobility requires adaptive means of communicating status (e.g.
Brooks, 1979; Belk, Bahn & Mayer, 1982; Clark, 1986; Fussell, 1983). The interpretation of
possessions as status symbols and the acknowledgement of territorial dominance that follows
from that have been shown by Bouska and Beatty (1978). They observed the frequency with
which shoppers entering a department store would detour around a student and fellow
confederate dressed as a student, businessman, or priest. The resuits showed a positive
relationship between the frequency of detours and the status displayed in the dress of the
confederate. Status possessions, in this case clothes, led to others acknowledging territorial
SOTAIGE.
This leads to the fourth tradition of research on the symbolic functions of possessions,
that of marking territory. Goffman (1971) has suggested a taxonomy of markers: