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This research responds to claims that status motivates car use. It extends understandings of what status is and of how status influences car use practices. The paper begins with a theoretical exploration of the concept of status and continues with a case study exploring how individuals in Christchurch, New Zealand, relate to status concerns associated with cars. Drawing on in-depth qualitative research, the paper finds that participants conceptualised status in terms of multidimensional hybrid assemblages of meaning. Further, a car had to match a person's wider social and cultural context in order to perform as a status symbol. Cars that symbolised a sense of intentional accomplishment or progression were most often associated with desired dimensions of status. The paper concludes by noting that status symbolism reflects a complex interplay of social dynamics, and that status is more than a characteristic of a material object. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article, based on empirical research in two villages in Bangladesh, examines the ways in which migration is not a mere response to poverty and family survival, but becomes an instrument to interrogate the power of the traditional elite and contribute to social and status mobility in the local context. By focusing on four key inter-related dimensions of place, work, consumption and marriage, and on the hierarchies embedded within different migrant destinations, it points to the ways in which migration strategies are related to mobility strategies, and contributes to refiguring class and gender identities. Religion and the construction of a modern Islamic identity, bearing simultaneously elements of materiality and spirituality, serve as a crucial mediating force in this process, bridging the gap between aspirations and praxis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]