Local lifestyles: Renovation and rhetorics of need in elite New York families

This paper analyzes the consumption practices and discourses of elite New York families, particularly those related to home renovation. Based on in-depth interviews with wealthy parents and paid lifestyle workers, the paper shows that elite renovators frame their projects as meeting reasonable or “middle class” needs, especially those of children. While their lifestyles are facilitated by global circuits of capital and marked by international leisure travel, these families seek to distance themselves from ideas about wealthy people as ostentatious or jet-setting, presenting themselves as “normal” consumers rooted in local communities.