Observing conspicuous consumption in Monte Carlo becomes a challenge in a setting where social development is part of a choreography. Gestures, visible objects, and urban movements translate into a ritual. It is important for the researcher to understand the need to transcend the tangibility of luxury in order to try to understand in depth the process of constructing belonging, the implicit and explicit desire for recognition, and the manifestation of structural inequality with the rest of the country’s districts in everyday practices.

The presence of the researcher creates tension in the methodological process, as they are both an observer and part of the social spectacle. This dual dimension requires deep reflection on the need for the researcher to dissociate themselves from the academic purpose and their very participation in the system they are trying to analyze.

It is important to consider that, in Monte Carlo, it is not only about what is on display, but also about what must be implicitly perceived in terms of mechanisms of access control, power, and exclusion, that is, those that constitute the role of protagonist or spectator.That is why my vision as a researcher does not conceptualize luxury as a set of goods, but as a social construct. Hundreds of hours of field research have been conducted in Port Hercule, the Monte Carlo Casino, and the Carré d’Or, describing the role of conspicuous consumption as an architecture of power that structures space and legitimizes social development.

Understanding these architectural and spatial patterns allows me to analyze Monte Carlo as an exceptional setting for the study of how it reproduces contemporary hierarchies.