Tak govoril Veblen

Abstract

This note deals with the QWERTY effect in Russian scholarly discourse. The case in point is the concept of conspicuous consumption, and how this core term of Thorstein Veblen is translated into Russian in the papers on the sociology of consumption and institutional studies. Russian-language authors tend to speak of “demonstrativnoye potreblenie” (demonstrative consumption), whereas Veblen himself did not use such an expression and avoided employing the adjective “demonstrative” altogether. “Demonstrativnoye potreblenie” as the Russian equivalent for conspicuous consumption got entrenched soon after the release of the translation of Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions in Russian in 1984. We attribute it to the habit of adopting cumbersome anglicisms that might look more like science, for some. This note calls for a rectification of names to clarify the discourse of economists and sociologists.