Extravagance as a tool of family display

Abstract

This article advances sociological debate on how families enact and negotiate public displays of family. By extending Janet Finch’s ‘tools of display’, we theorise extravagance as a distinctive and dynamic practice used to confirm and legitimise relationships as familial. Drawing on a qualitative multi-method study of a spectacular community event, we reveal how families deploy embodied and emplaced forms of extravagance to navigate tacit display norms, while responding to and collaborating with diverse audiences. Our findings demonstrate that external audiences actively shape displays through iterative interactions with families that escalate or de-escalate extravagance. By reframing Finch’s concept of ‘degrees of intensity’ as a fluid dynamic negotiated between families and publics, we illuminate the dual role of external audiences as both insiders and gatekeepers in sustaining and contesting norms of display. We further show how situating family display in shared public places intensifies social exposure, creating deliberative arenas where displays are compared, validated or critiqued. Our study contributes to sociological understandings of family display as a collaborative, risky and place-bound performance through which families negotiate identity, belonging and legitimacy beyond the domestic environment.