Photo by McMaster University, Canada

Birthplace Cato, Wisconsin, USA.
Posts Held Teacher, Univ. Chicago, 1892-1906. Stanford Univ., 1906-9, Univ. Missouri, 1911-18, New School for Social Res., NY, 1918-26.
Degrees BA Carleton Coll., 1880; PhD Yale Univ., 1884.
Publications Books: 1. The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899, 1953, 1959); 2. The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904, 1965); 3. The Instinct of Workmanship (1914, 1964); 4. Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution (1915, 1964); 5. The Higher Learning in America (1918, 1957); 6. Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times (1923, 1967); 7. Essays in our Changing Order (1934, 1964); 8. The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation (1918, 1961).
Career Economis and sociologist who criticised American society from an evolutionary and cosmopolitan viewpoint. His scathing indictment of capitalism did not, however, lead him to involvement with programmes for reform. He viewed society society as a conflict between an acquisitive and a technocratic instinct. The terms `conspicuous consumption' and `pecuniary emulation' have entered the language from Veblen's works. He enjoyed a wide readership in his own day and was highly regarded by some of his pupils, who sustained him through the difficulties of his academic career. He soon came to be regarded as the founder of an American institutionalist school, which survives to this day. American institutionalism, however, owes perhaps more to Mitchell and Commons than to Veblen, who was too idiosyncratic to be capable of imitation and development.
Secondary Literature J. Dorfman, Thorstein Veblen and his America (Kelly, 1961); A. K. Davis, `Veblen, Thorstein', International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences , D. L. Sills (ed.) (Macmillan and Free Press, 1968), vol. 16; J. Dorfman, ed, Thorstein Veblen: Essays, Reviews and Reports - Priviously Uncollected Writings (Augustus M. Kelly, 1973); J. P. Diggin, The Bard of Savagery: Thorstein Veblen and Modern Social Theory (Harvester Press, 1978). [Mark Blaug, Great Economists Before Keynes: An Introduction to the Lives and Works of One Hundread Great Economists of the Past , Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1986.]

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