“What is a ‘weekend?’” Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, famously asked during the first season of Downton Abbey, set in 1912. The joke, of course, is that the Dowager Countess is too aristocratic to even recognize the concept of a week divided between work and leisure. Consistent with this portrayal, Thorstein Veblen, one of the biggest theorists on status signaling, suggested in 1899 that living a leisurely life and not working (what he refers to as “conspicuous abstention from labor”) is the most powerful way to signal one’s status in the eyes of others. This makes sense: if you are very wealthy, you can afford as much leisure as you wish.
Research: Why Americans Are So Impressed by Busyness
And Italians aren’t.
December 15, 2016
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