front cover of Showing Off, Showing Up
Showing Off, Showing Up
Studies of Hype, Heightened Performance, and Cultural Power
Laurie Frederik, Kim Marra, and Catherine Schuler, Editors
University of Michigan Press, 2017
The interdisciplinary essays in Showing Off, Showing Up examine acts of showing, a particular species of performance that relies on competition and judgment, active spectatorship, embodied excess, and exposure of core values and hidden truths. Acts of showing highlight those dimensions of performance that can most manipulate spectators and consumers, often through over-the-top heightening and skewing of presentation. Many forms of showing and of heightened performance, however, operate more enigmatically and covertly while still profoundly affecting the social world, even if our reactions to them are initially flippant or unconcerned because “it’s just a show.” Examining a wide range of examples—from dog shows to competitive dancing to carnivals to striptease, the essays illuminate how such events variously foster competition, exaggerate a characteristic, and reveal hidden truths. There is as much to be learned about the power of showing through subtlety and underlying intentionality as through overt display. The book’s theoretical introduction and 12 essays by leading scholars reveal how diverse, particularly efficacious genres of showing are theoretically connected and why they merit more concerted attention, especially in the 21st century.

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front cover of Showing Off
Showing Off
The Geltung Hypothesis
By Philip L. Wagner
University of Texas Press, 1996

Hardly a place exists on earth that has not been shaped in some way by human beings. Every day we modify and even sweep away natural landscapes as we build places to live and work. But why we react and interact as social beings intent on exercising ecological dominance poses an endlessly compelling puzzle for everyone from novelists to geographers.

In Showing Off, distinguished geographer Philip L. Wagner offers a persuasive hypothesis. Drawing on a lifetime of inquiry, travel, and teaching, he asserts that the strive for Geltung—personal standing, recognition, acceptance, esteem, and influence—shapes all of our interactions and defines the unique social character of human beings.

Wagner applies the Geltung hypothesis to a wide range of human activities from falling in love and spreading gossip to buying goods and making war. His examples demonstrate how communication and display—"showing off"—impel geographic change, as they reveal how and why people with the most Geltung tend to occupy the most desirable places.

This broad vision draws insights from many fields. A major contribution to cultural geography, the book also sheds new light on individual psychology and psychopathology and suggests new themes for cognitive science and even philosophy. Sure to stir lively debate in many circles, it will be provocative reading for everyone fascinated by the continuum between people and places.

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