Veblen And Modern America

Veblen And Modern America PDF Author: Michael Spindler
Publisher: Pluto Press
ISBN: 9780745309590
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
EvaluatesVeblen not just as an economist or a sociologist but as a seminal critic of modern American culture.

Veblen And Modern America

Veblen And Modern America PDF Author: Michael Spindler
Publisher: Pluto Press
ISBN: 9780745309590
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
EvaluatesVeblen not just as an economist or a sociologist but as a seminal critic of modern American culture.

Veblen in Perspective

Veblen in Perspective PDF Author: Stephen Edgell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317453654
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
This work discusses the impact and contemporary relevance of the work of Thorstein Veblen, as well as the source of his ideas. It suggests that he was one of the first modern sociologists of consumption whose analysis of contemporary display and fashion anticipated later theories and research.

Thorstein Veblen and the Enrichment of Evolutionary Naturalism

Thorstein Veblen and the Enrichment of Evolutionary Naturalism PDF Author: Rick Tilman
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826265979
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
"Tilman argues that evolutionary naturalism provides the philosophical foundations of Veblen's thought. He links evolutionary naturalism to Veblen's aesthetics, secular humanism, sociology of control, sociobiology, and sociology of knowledge, thereby initiating observations regarding the relationship of Veblen's own life to his thinking and his place as a cultural lag theorist"--Provided by publisher.

The Political Ideas of Thorstein Veblen

The Political Ideas of Thorstein Veblen PDF Author: Sidney Plotkin
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030016338X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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Book Description
Thorstein Veblen is best known for his authorship of "The Theory of the Leisure Class" and "The Theory of Business Enterprise," which made him a celebrated figure in the fields of economics and sociology at the turn of the twentieth century. In this book, Sidney Plotkin and Rick Tilman argue that in addition to his well-known work in these fields Veblen also made important--and until now overlooked--statements about politics.While Veblen's writings seldom mention politics, they are saturated with political ideas: about the relationship among war, executive power, and democracy; about the similarities between modern executive positions and monarchy; about the political influence of corporate power; about the symbolism of politics; and about many other issues. By demonstrating the deep relevance of Veblen's writings to today's political troubles, "The Political Ideas of Thorstein Veblen "offers an important reconsideration of a major American thinker.

Thorstein Veblen

Thorstein Veblen PDF Author: Douglas F. Dowd
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 9781412839969
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Thorstein Veblen shook the complacency of America in the early twentieth century with his incisive criticisms of our social and economic systems. Discarding the classical view of "eternal" economic laws that conveniently justified the nineteenth-century predatory practices of "big business" in terms of rational self-interest, Veblen cast a fresh, merciless eye on America's money-making passion. In glittering prose, Veblen exposed our social system as one designed to block man's natural "instinct of workmanship." He demonstrated that our leisure-class culture fostered the myth that work was inherently irksome to man. Veblen was also fascinated by the machine and the new science of technology. He saw businessmen basically at war with engineers and scientists because making exorbitant profits did not necessarily jibe with making better goods. In his study of this intriguing personality, Thorstein Veblen, Douglas Dowd reveals that Veblen was unsuccessful in his university career and his two marriages, and in his private life was strange, bitter, and detached. But in his books, Veblen shone as one of America's most penetrating thinkers whose theories proved a potent force in the moderniation of economics as a science. Dowd's sympathetic approach to Veblen's nature and problems places this giant in the field against a contemporary background in powerful and lively fashion. In his new introduction, Michael Keaney breathes new life into this unjustly neglected primer on Veblen. A new generation of students will undoubtedly benefit from this comprehensive guide to the thought of someone whose intellectual endeavor was non-doctrinaire and constantly -changing. Douglas Dowd was professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University. He was Guggenheim Fellow. His writings include, Modern Economic Problems in Historical Perspective, America's Role in the World Economy, Step by Step, Thorstein Veblen: A Critical Reappraisal, and numerous articles for scholarly journals and encyclopedias. Michael Keaney is a lecturer in economics at Glasgow Caledonian -University.

Thorstein Veblen

Thorstein Veblen PDF Author: John Patrick Diggins
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691223319
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
Fired by Stanford and the University of Chicago but recommended by his peers to the presidency of the American Economic Association, Thorstein Veblen remains a baffling figure in American intellectual history. In part because he was an eccentric who shunned publicity, he has also been one of our most neglected. Veblen is known to the general public only as coiner of the term "conspicuous consumption," and to scholars primarily as one of many social critics of the reform-minded Progressive Era. This important critical biography--originally published as The Bard of Savagery and now appearing in paperback for the first time--attempts both to unravel the riddles that surround his reputation and to assess his varied and important contributions to modern social theory.

The Representation of Veblen's Concepts from the Theory of the Leisure Class in Dreisers Sister Carrie

The Representation of Veblen's Concepts from the Theory of the Leisure Class in Dreisers Sister Carrie PDF Author: Oliver Steinert-Lieschied
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3640562038
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 69

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Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,2, University of Göttingen, language: English, abstract: With his "Theory of the Leisure Class" (1899), which is nowadays considered one of his most popular works, Veblen made himself a social outsider because his criticism of society was harsh and provoking. Although he accepted utilitarianism and praised the industrial efficiency of the engineering professions, he rejected what Mills calls the American value of the "heraldry of the greenback" and the "pecuniary fanatism of the business chieftain". Still his work was widely read and many of the problems which he saw in contemporary American society are even nowadays still quite relevant. Dreiser's first successful novel "Sister Carrie" was written in 1900, only one year after Veblen's main work had been published. This fact, as well as the widespread interest in Veblen's theories throughout America may have influenced Dreiser at least indirectly. More important though, is whether there is some textual evidence to prove their agreements and disagreements concerning their critique of society. In contrast to Veblen, Dreiser did not have a solid educational background and was in fact "almost a generation behind the sweep of American intellectual life" (Noble, "Dreiser and Veblen and the Literature of Cultural Change"), so many of his explanations of human hehaviour were made in terms of "chemisms" (Noble 149). Dreiser at times tended to believe Spencer's theories of social-Darwinism and that man was not much more than a "machine" and mainly controlled by physical laws, while Veblen had rather moved beyond such notions (Noble 149). On a deeper level though, Noble considers the supposedly post-Spencerian Veblen to have unconsciously clinged to Spencer's belief in optimistic progressivism, while Dreiser had in fact transcended such notions and raised some doubts about the belief in inevitable and controlled progress in his works (Nobl

Thorstein Veblen

Thorstein Veblen PDF Author: David Riesman
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 9781412839976
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
This is a brilliant and unconventional study of one of the most challenging figures in modern social and economic thought. David Riesman has chosen a deliberately personal method of exposition and evaluation, and he is by no means a disciple. He says of Veblen: “I find him more often interesting than attractive, more often pungent than wise.” By approaching Veblen subjectively and in a critical spirit, Riesman has arrived at an estimate of the man that is objective and balanced. Veblen's ideas and attitudes are carefully examined, with particular attention to his conviction that “the instinct of workmanship” was the constructive element in life, and to his fundamental principle of “idle curiosity.” Veblen is seen as a man with a passionate moral sense whose method was irony coupled with research. Riesman makes the interesting point that the author of The Theory of the Leisure Class was episodically a passionate, even revolutionary reformer, in contrast to a career primarily as an intellectual skeptic. Riesman looks behind the ideas, searching for their origins in Veblen's life, with the result that one finishes the book with a genuine sense of the strange man who is its subject. Riesman concludes that Thorstein Veblen is important not so much for his specific contribution to economic thought as for his stance toward the economy and his fellow economists. For us today, Riesman adds, Veblen's great value inheres in his way of seeing. The new introduction by Mestrovic provides an appreciation of Riesman, no less than Veblen. David Riesman is the Henry Ford II Professor Emeritus of Social Sciences at Harvard University. He has also taught at the University of Chicago, and Johns Hopkins University. Among his most important books are The Lonely Crowd; Faces in the Crowd; Individualism Reconsidered; and Constraint and Variety in American Education. His collection, Abundance for What?, confirms his place as the foremost sociologist of education in the modern era. Stjepan G. Mestrovic is a senior social theorist in his own right. He is currently located at Texas A&M University, where he is a professor of sociology.

Sold American

Sold American PDF Author: Charles F. McGovern
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 080787664X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 553

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Book Description
At the turn of the twentieth century, an emerging consumer culture in the United States promoted constant spending to meet material needs and develop social identity and self-cultivation. In Sold American, Charles F. McGovern examines the key players active in shaping this cultural evolution: advertisers and consumer advocates. McGovern argues that even though these two professional groups invented radically different models for proper spending, both groups propagated mass consumption as a specifically American social practice and an important element of nationality and citizenship. Advertisers, McGovern shows, used nationalist ideals, icons, and political language to define consumption as the foundation of the pursuit of happiness. Consumer advocates, on the other hand, viewed the market with a republican-inspired skepticism and fought commercial incursions on consumer independence. The result, says McGovern, was a redefinition of the citizen as consumer. The articulation of an "American Way of Life" in the Depression and World War II ratified consumer abundance as the basis of a distinct American culture and history.

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.”