Wealth and Status in an Age of Trump: The Cultural Production and Consumption of the Super-Rich

On 17 May 2017, Professor John Armitage, Co-Director of the Winchester Luxury Research Group at Winchester School of Art, will be one of the speakers at this half day event at The University of Leicester.

The global economy has been shaped by the rise of multinational corporations and global brands, outsourced labour, and the increased withdrawal of the state. At the same time, protracted economic slowdown and austerity measures, implemented alongside a continued concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, have resulted in a growing popular awareness of global and local inequalities, which have shaped public views on wealth and luxury. As a result, the cultural production and consumption of the super-rich have become areas of interest for researchers across a wide range of fields, including political economics, sociology, cultural studies, management, and creative industries and media studies.

The recent rise of Trump as a political, cultural, and media event has opened up new opportunities for interrogating the connections between wealth, luxury, and power. Attention has been given to the aesthetics of Trump as a magnate and politician, in addition to speculation on the changes that will occur on a global scale as a result of a new US government marked by an increased influence of corporations and the super-rich. This, paired with growing inequality, urgently calls for critical reflections on the cultural production and consumption of the super-rich, and the representational politics of wealth. This event will address the politics, aesthetics and ontology of wealth and luxury, via such topics as:

• The politics and aesthetics of the production and provision of luxury goods and services
• The spatial politics of wealth and the consumption of luxury
• The relationship between wealth, status and politics
• Mechanisms and implications of the concentration of wealth
• The aesthetics of luxury and the politics of vulgarity

This half-day event will bring together an interdisciplinary panel of experts to discuss the current landscape of luxury, power and the cultural production and consumption of the super-rich.

Speakers:

Professor John Armitage (University of Southampton)

Professor Sarah Hall (University of Nottingham)

Professor Jonathan Beaverstock (University of Bristol)

Dr Jo Littler (University of London)

This event is part of the Cultural Production and Consumption research strand of CAMEo, the University of Leicester’s Research Institute for Cultural and Media Economies. For more information on CAMEo please visit www.le.ac.uk/cameo.