While the importance of consumption of luxury goods as a mechanism accompanying upwards movement in a social hierarchy has been well acknowledged, attention to the role and perceptions of luxury in multicultural societies has been scarce so far. It is nonetheless intriguing that ethnic groups inhabiting the same territory, and exposed to a same culture, might develop substantially different notions of luxury, which may end up affecting the integration, or isolation, of one of the groups. Our article addresses this deficiency in the literature by exploring the case of Estonia, a multi-ethnic society where Russians make up almost one-fourth of the population. Much has been written about the integration, and lack thereof, of ethnic Russians into Estonian society. We contrast these views by looking at inter-ethnic relations in the country from a different angle and by a) looking at consumption of luxury in the country through the concept of ‘conspicuous consumption'; b) endorsing Foster's concept of consumer citizenship. This allows us to shed light on an under-explored tendency and maintain here that, in a significant number of cases, ordinary citizens challenge official identity narratives by the state through counter-narratives centred around consumption of luxury at the everyday level. The identified counter-narratives end up translating into (consumer behaviour) instructions for those Russians willing to assert their Estonianness thus allowing them to seek integration into the majority group by simply consuming luxury items that they perceive as appreciated among Estonians, or associated with Estonian high status. By doing this, we make a case for expanding the parameters for academic scrutiny of social integration to include more ‘banal' forms of consumer practices through which top- down narratives and macro studies may be challenged.

中文翻译：

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作为塔林身份标志的奢侈品消费：通过消费者公民身份对俄罗斯和爱沙尼亚日常身份建构的研究

虽然奢侈品消费作为一种伴随社会等级向上运动的机制的重要性已得到广泛承认，但迄今为止，对奢侈品在多元文化社会中的作用和看法的关注很少。尽管如此，有趣的是，居住在同一领土上并接触相同文化的族群可能会形成截然不同的奢侈品观念，最终可能会影响其中一个群体的融合或孤立。我们的文章通过探讨爱沙尼亚的案例来解决文献中的这一缺陷，爱沙尼亚是一个多民族社会，俄罗斯人几乎占人口的四分之一。关于俄罗斯族人融入爱沙尼亚社会的问题已经有很多报道。我们通过从不同的角度看待该国的种族间关系以及通过 a) 通过“炫耀性消费”的概念来看待该国的奢侈品消费来对比这些观点；b) 认可福斯特的消费者公民概念。这使我们能够阐明一种未被充分探索的趋势，并在此坚持认为，在大量情况下，普通公民通过以日常奢侈品消费为中心的反叙事挑战国家的官方身份叙事。确定的反叙事最终转化为（消费者行为）指令，供那些愿意维护自己爱沙尼亚人的俄罗斯人使用，从而使他们能够通过简单地消费他们认为爱沙尼亚人欣赏的奢侈品来寻求融入多数群体，或与爱沙尼亚的高地位有关。通过这样做，我们为扩大社会融合学术审查的参数提供了一个案例，以包括更多“平庸”形式的消费者实践，通过这些实践，自上而下的叙述和宏观研究可能会受到挑战。