The Moral Economy of Taste

Abstract

It emerged from chapter 8 that the majority of sadah reckon the choice of professions based on secular knowledge to be conducive to maintaining or gaining prosperity and to their accommodation to post-revolutionary Yemen. In San’a wealth accumulation and consumption contribute significantly to the definition of elite status. The cultural logic by which material and immaterial artifacts are understood is instructive about ’Alid self-identification in an era of rapid cultural and politico-economic transformation. Those sadah, who have successfully asserted their claim to elite status in republican Yemen, have employed their resources to construct a new identity which is, in important respects, one based on consumption. Consumption is also a means to reformulate their relations with others by adhering to the norms of the nascent “consumer society.”¹