The Economic Theory of the Leisure Class

The Economic Theory of the Leisure Class PDF Author: Nikolaĭ Bukharin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Austrian school of economics
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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The Economic Theory of the Leisure Class

The Economic Theory of the Leisure Class PDF Author: Nikolaĭ Bukharin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Austrian school of economics
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description


The Theory of the Leisure Class

The Theory of the Leisure Class PDF Author: Thorstein Veblen
Publisher: The Floating Press
ISBN: 1775411249
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description
Considered the first in-depth critique of consumerism, economist Thorstein Veblen's 1899 book The Theory of the Leisure Class has come to be regarded as one of the great works of economic theory. Using contemporary and anthropological accounts, Veblen held that our economic and social norms are driven by traces of our early tribal life, rather than ideas of utility.

The Sum of Small Things

The Sum of Small Things PDF Author: Elizabeth Currid-Halkett
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400884691
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
How the leisure class has been replaced by a new elite, and how their consumer habits affect us all In today’s world, the leisure class has been replaced by a new elite. Highly educated and defined by cultural capital rather than income bracket, these individuals earnestly buy organic, carry NPR tote bags, and breast-feed their babies. They care about discreet, inconspicuous consumption—like eating free-range chicken and heirloom tomatoes, wearing organic cotton shirts and TOMS shoes, and listening to the Serial podcast. They use their purchasing power to hire nannies and housekeepers, to cultivate their children’s growth, and to practice yoga and Pilates. In The Sum of Small Things, Elizabeth Currid-Halkett dubs this segment of society “the aspirational class” and discusses how, through deft decisions about education, health, parenting, and retirement, the aspirational class reproduces wealth and upward mobility, deepening the ever-wider class divide. Exploring the rise of the aspirational class, Currid-Halkett considers how much has changed since the 1899 publication of Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class. In that inflammatory classic, which coined the phrase “conspicuous consumption,” Veblen described upper-class frivolities: men who used walking sticks for show, and women who bought silver flatware despite the effectiveness of cheaper aluminum utensils. Now, Currid-Halkett argues, the power of material goods as symbols of social position has diminished due to their accessibility. As a result, the aspirational class has altered its consumer habits away from overt materialism to more subtle expenditures that reveal status and knowledge. And these transformations influence how we all make choices. With a rich narrative and extensive interviews and research, The Sum of Small Things illustrates how cultural capital leads to lifestyle shifts and what this forecasts, not just for the aspirational class but for everyone.

Veblen

Veblen PDF Author: Charles Camic
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674659724
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 505

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Book Description
A bold new biography of the thinker who demolished accepted economic theories in order to expose how people of economic and social privilege plunder their wealth from society’s productive men and women. Thorstein Veblen was one of America’s most penetrating analysts of modern capitalist society. But he was not, as is widely assumed, an outsider to the social world he acidly described. Veblen overturns the long-accepted view that Veblen’s ideas, including his insights about conspicuous consumption and the leisure class, derived from his position as a social outsider. In the hinterlands of America’s Midwest, Veblen’s schooling coincided with the late nineteenth-century revolution in higher education that occurred under the patronage of the titans of the new industrial age. The resulting educational opportunities carried Veblen from local Carleton College to centers of scholarship at Johns Hopkins, Yale, Cornell, and the University of Chicago, where he studied with leading philosophers, historians, and economists. Afterward, he joined the nation’s academic elite as a professional economist, producing his seminal books The Theory of the Leisure Class and The Theory of Business Enterprise. Until late in his career, Veblen was, Charles Camic argues, the consummate academic insider, engaged in debates about wealth distribution raging in the field of economics. Veblen demonstrates how Veblen’s education and subsequent involvement in those debates gave rise to his original ideas about the social institutions that enable wealthy Americans—a swarm of economically unproductive “parasites”—to amass vast fortunes on the backs of productive men and women. Today, when great wealth inequalities again command national attention, Camic helps us understand the historical roots and continuing reach of Veblen’s searing analysis of this “sclerosis of the American soul.”

The Tourist

The Tourist PDF Author: Dean MacCannell
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520280008
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
In this classic analysis of travel and sightseeing, author Dean MacCannell brings social scientific understandings to bear on tourism in the postindustrial age, during which the middle class has acquired leisure time for international travel. In The Tourist—now with a new introduction framing it as part of a broader contemporary social and cultural analysis—the author examines notions of authenticity, high and low culture, and the construction of social reality around tourism.

Conspicuous Consumption

Conspicuous Consumption PDF Author: Thorstein Veblen
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141964316
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 83

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Book Description
With its wry portrayal of a shallow, materialistic 'leisure class' obsessed by clothes, cars, consumer goods and climbing the social ladder, this withering satire on modern capitalism is as pertinent today as when it was written over a century ago.

The Engineers and the Price System

The Engineers and the Price System PDF Author: Thorstein Veblen
Publisher: Viking Adult
ISBN:
Category : Capitalism
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description


Modern Economic Classics-Evaluations Through Time

Modern Economic Classics-Evaluations Through Time PDF Author: Bernard S. Katz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351982389
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 550

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Book Description
In this book, first published in 1988, the editors have included the reviews of thirteen classic works on economic theory, empirical economic studies, political economy and management. Each major work was chosen due to its contribution in shaping our current knowledge and perspectives, and each essay is commented on by important critics in different eras. This title will be of interest to students of economic thought.

Thorstein Veblen

Thorstein Veblen PDF Author: Murray Murphey
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135124437X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
In his latest book, scholar-historian Murray G. Murphey exhaustively explores the life and theory of Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929), whom, many scholars agree, remains one of the leading social theorists of all time, if not also one of the more confounding. Murphey’s account begins with a brief economic history of nineteenth-century America, wherein he examines the conditions that formed Veblen’s ideology. With that understanding, the author studies Veblen’s personal history and brings to the fore his foundational ideas on human psychology, race, his theory of knowledge, and his analysis of social evolution. In the book’s later chapters, Murphey considers Veblen’s writing through the scope of his major volumes – The Theory of the Leisure Class, The Theory of Business Enterprise, and Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution, among others. Spanning the latter stages of the nineteenth century into the first several decades of the twentieth century, Murphey traces Veblen’s radical economics and thinking within the broader context of America’s economic theory. In so doing, he upholds Veblen’s influence on the canons of economics and social science, and importantly, he attempts to resolve the lingering mystery behind one of America’s more puzzling and influential theorists.

Bobos in Paradise

Bobos in Paradise PDF Author: David Brooks
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416561730
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
In his bestselling work of “comic sociology,” David Brooks coins a new word, Bobo, to describe today’s upper class—those who have wed the bourgeois world of capitalist enterprise to the hippie values of the bohemian counterculture. Their hybrid lifestyle is the atmosphere we breathe, and in this witty and serious look at the cultural consequences of the information age, Brooks has defined a new generation. Do you believe that spending $15,000 on a media center is vulgar, but that spending $15,000 on a slate shower stall is a sign that you are at one with the Zenlike rhythms of nature? Do you work for one of those visionary software companies where people come to work wearing hiking boots and glacier glasses, as if a wall of ice were about to come sliding through the parking lot? If so, you might be a Bobo.