The Spirit of Luxury : Special Issue
- Submitting institution
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University of Southampton
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 77279177
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
-
-
- Publisher
- Duke University Press
- ISBN
- 0000000000
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- March
- Year of publication
- 2016
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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1
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Roberts and Armitage’s article represents the editorship of a special issue of Cultural Politics. Introducing the original concept of ‘the spirit of luxury’. The editors begin the issue by delineating the philosophical idea of luxury, emphasising its discursive meaning, and contemplating its historical and etymological origins. Surveying eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth century discussions of philosophical, political, and economic approaches to luxury (Hume, Marx, Veblen), they recover Werner Sombart’s neglected sociological work on the spirit of capitalism and recast it in the form of the spirit of luxury for the contemporary era. Building on an international critical luxury studies seminar held at Winchester School of Art in 2015, the special issue draws together the research of globally renowned scholars and artists concerning the idea of the contemporary spirit of luxury. Following the editors’ opening article, ten subsequent contributions adopt a critical understanding of the spirit of luxury, investigating issues including eighteenth century fashion, wealth, political philosophy, art, branding, space, time, psychoanalysis, disruptive technologies, morality, and inequality. Through the curation of this special issue, a wide-ranging and rigorous contribution to understandings of the antecedents and contemporary manifestations of the spirit of luxury was achieved. The special issue is a significant development of the field of critical luxury studies, which originates from the editors’ volume of the same name (Critical Luxury Studies: Art, Design, Media). The recuperation and refashioning of Sombart’s analysis of the spirit of capitalism and its advancement in the form of the spirit of luxury is a significant addition to contemporary understandings of luxury. Indeed, the special issue has received much interest from scholars of luxury and related fields, with the editors’ contribution featuring regularly among the top five read articles of Cultural Politics. The editors have presented on the spirit of luxury in numerous intellectual fora, including Harvard University.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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