Chapter IV of the Theory of the Leisure Class is all about conspicuous   
consumption.  There are many instances where Veblen discusses the   
social/cultural embeddedness, including this one:  
  
As wealth accumulates, the leisure class develops further in function   
and structure, and there arises a differentiation within the class.   
There is a more or less elaborate system of rank and grades. This   
differentiation is furthered by the inheritance of wealth and the   
consequent inheritance of gentility. With the inheritance of gentility   
goes the inheritance of obligatory leisure; and gentility of a   
sufficient potency to entail a life of leisure may be inherited without   
the complement of wealth required to maintain a dignified leisure.   
Gentle blood may be transmitted without goods enough to afford a   
reputably free consumption at one's ease. Hence results a class of   
impecunious gentlemen of leisure, incidentally referred to already.   
These half-caste gentlemen of leisure fall into a system of hierarchical   
gradations. Those who stand near the higher and the highest grades of   
the wealthy leisure class, in point of birth, or in point of wealth, or   
both, outrank the remoterborn and the pecuniarily weaker. These lower   
grades, especially the impecunious, or marginal, gentlemen of leisure,   
affiliate themselves by a system of dependence or fealty to the great   
ones; by so doing they gain an increment of repute, or of the means with   
which to lead a life of leisure, from their patron. They become his   
courtiers or retainers, servants; and being fed and countenanced by   
their patron they are indices of his rank and vicarious consumers of his   
superfluous wealth. Many of these affiliated gentlemen of leisure are at   
the same time lesser men of substance in their own right; so that some   
of them are scarcely at all, others only partially, to be rated as   
vicarious consumers. So many of them, however, as make up the retainers   
and hangers-on of the patron may be classed as vicarious consumers   
without qualification. Many of these again, and also many of the other   
aristocracy of less degree, have in turn attached to their persons a   
more or less comprehensive group of vicarious consumers in the persons   
of their wives and children, their servants, retainers, etc.  
  
Bert Mosselmans