Veblen's Theory Research Articles

Income inequality and CO2 emissions nexus: A long-run analysis for Turkey

The relationship between economic factors and environmental impacts is of paramount significance in the pursuit of sustainable development and the implementation of effective measures to alleviate environmental deterioration. This research utilizes the VECM, FMOLS, CCR, and DOLS methodologies to examine the relationship between income inequality and CO2 emissions spanning from 1990 to 2022 in Turkey. Theoretical frameworks such as Boyce's socio-economic dynamics, Veblen's pecuniary emulation theory, and the marginal propensity to emit provide detailed insights into the complex relationship between economic inequality and environmental degradation. In synthesizing the literature on income inequality and CO2 emissions, we observe a wide spectrum of findings ranging from positive to negative associations, with some studies yielding inconclusive results in different nations and areas. Beyond income inequality, this research considers a wider range of CO2 explanatory factors, such as GDP per capita, industrial value added, energy consumption, renewable energy, population density, and the Gini index. The estimates reveal that income per capita, industrial value added, energy consumption, and population density show positive linkages with CO2 emissions. On the other hand, renewable energy share and income inequality reflect negative associations with CO2 emissions. Notably, an increase in the Gini coefficient, reflecting worse income distribution, is associated with a reduction in CO2 emissions in Turkey.

Or sexism from Veblen's institutionalist theory

Sexism is a deeply rooted social issue that manifests itself in many forms, including unequal treatment, limited opportunities, and biased expectations placed on individuals based on their gender. Understanding the intricate relationship between sexism and economic development is crucial for designing effective policies and interventions to combat gender inequalities. The main objective is, then, to examine the cultural dimension of sexism, aiming to provide an understanding of the mechanisms through which sexism operates within institutions. A case study was then carried out, with a qualitative approach and observation technique to perceive cultural evidence of sexism in the participants' attitudes. At the end of the study, it was possible to understand that the main objective can only be achieved with systematic, longer-term research that can use different research instruments for in-depth analysis.

The Weirdness of James Bond's World: How Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class Helps Us Understand Ian Fleming's 007

This working paper takes as its subject the well-known oddities of the original Ian Fleming James Bond novels--the questionable-seeming claims for Bond's exceptional competence as a secret agent, the place of various luxuries with which Fleming closely associates Bond (down to his favored brand of strawberry jam) and the complex interactions between Bond and villain, with their sometime combination of gentility and gamesmanship with murderous intent. Examining these features of the books through the lens afforded by the sociologist Thorstein Veblen's theory of the leisure class, it shows that these details of the stories, implausible as they are, are remarkably consistent with Veblen's analysis of the prowess-living, conspicuously consuming barbarian, which world-view seems to deeply inform the work.

GÖSTERİŞÇİ TÜKETİMİN VE MOTİVASYONLARININ YAŞ KUŞAKLARI EKSENİNDE İNCELENMESİ

Gösterişçi tüketim, tüketici davranışlarının en eski konularından bir tanesidir. Veblen’den günümüze araştırmacılar; kişilerin, arzuladıkları kimliklere ve karakterlere seçtikleri ürünlerle ulaştıklarını söylemektedir. Bu çalışmada; tüketicilerin gösterişçi tüketimleri, Veblen’in Aylak Sınıfın Teorisi bağlamında ele alınarak, kuşaklar arası bir kıyasa gidilmiştir Araştırmanın amacı, gösterişçi tüketimin temel motivasyonlarını ve bu motivasyonlar arasındaki ilişkiyi ortaya çıkarmak, bu yapının kuşaklara göre değişimini anlamaktır. Araştırma kapsamında; online ve yüz yüze anket yöntemleri ile 20 Temmuz- 15 Ekim 2019 tarihleri arasında 477 kişiden anket toplanmıştır. Elde edilen veriler; kikare analizi, frekans analizi, bağımsız t-testi, MANOVA testi, keşfedici faktör analizi, doğrulayıcı faktör analizi ve yol analizleri kullanılarak, SPSS ve AMOS paket programları yardımıyla analiz edilmiştir. Yapısal eşitlik modellemesi ile tüketicilerin sosyal kabul ihtiyacının ve statü arayışının gösterişçi tüketimlerini pozitif yönde etkilediği; prestij duyarlılıklarının ise gösterişçi tüketimlerini negatif yönde etkilediği belirlenmiştir. Gösterişçi tüketim eğiliminde tüketicilerin cinsiyeti ve gelirine göre anlamlı bir farklılık görülmezken yaş değişkenine ilişkin anlamlı sonuçlar elde edilmiştir. Araştırmanın sonuçları, ulaşılan bulgular çerçevesinde tartışılmış, araştırmacılara ve uygulamacılara birtakım öneriler sunulmuştur.

Hakkor Right: A Veblenian Narration of the Differences between the Justice Notions in Western Europe and Turkey

AbstractUsing Veblen's status emulation theory in the background, but essentially engaged in theoretical debates on the transition to capitalism and modernity, this paper attempts to provide a comparative account of different forms of domination in Western European feudal society and the Ottoman Empire. In contrast, an individualistic representation of reality gained prevalence in social conflicts in Western Europe, precisely because forms of exploitation associated with European serfdom were far more severe and un‐tempered than was true for the Ottoman Empire. Due to being short of a legitimate claim to genuine nobility, Western European feudal aristocracy was driven into an insatiable hunger for luxury and waste. In the absence of a powerful central authority, members of this class “turned inward” for their ever‐increasing exploits and waged war against their servants, living and working under their private jurisdictions. The peasants, both free and serf, not only revolted repeatedly, but also ran into the cities to have “fairly secure property rights” so that they would be “the lord” or “dominus” of their own lives and morality. Out of this, a new justice notion had grown, that of natural rights law, which equated all human individuals within one single concern, that of “the right to self‐preservation,” eventually dragging the whole social fabric into heightened self‐centeredness. The Ottoman ruling class could not turn inward and wage an open class war against its servants. This was the land of peace,dar‐al Islam. All people, Muslim and non‐Muslim lived, or were supposed to live, in peace and harmony under the supreme order ofHakk. The transition to an individualistic justice notion along the lines of natural rights law was on the whole clogged in Turkey.

The psychology of early institutional economics: The instinctive approach of Thorstein Veblen's conspicuous consumer theory

Abstract Thorstein Veblen, a founder of original or old institutional economics, combined social and evolutionary thought in his institutionalist approach to dealing with psychological, social, and economic issues. The psychological content of Veblen's writings takes instinct and habits into consideration. The economic literature on the psychological content of Veblen's writings has focused on habits, despite the importance of instincts in Veblen's works. This paper attempts to discuss Veblen's notion of instincts in order to make its role clearer in his approach to conspicuous consumer decision making. It discusses the role of instincts, the instinct of workmanship, the relationship between habits and instincts, and their influence on the conspicuous consumer. Consequently, this paper contributes to a better understanding of how inner forces and socialization culminate in behavior in Veblen's conspicuous consumer approach.

Thorstein Veblen's Darwinian framework and gene-culture coevolution theory

At the turn of the previous century, Thorstein Veblen used Darwinian evolutionary principles to explain the macro-historical evolution of human societies, as well as the institutional structure of the modern pecuniary culture. Even if Veblen had a strong intuitive grasp of the evolutionary forces operating in society, he was not always clear and explicit in developing his ideas towards a full-fledged, consistent evolutionary social theory. This paper argues that a relatively recent theoretical approach, gene-culture coevolution theory, has the conceptual apparatus to remedy this problem and thus make Veblen's ideas an important part of contemporary evolutionary thinking in social theory.

The Business Enterprise in the Age of Money Manager Capitalism

:Thorstein Veblen's going concern theory of the business enterprise has been widely received by heterodox economists. Since Veblen's era, the capitalist social provisioning process has evolved toward money manager capitalism in a dialectical fashion. At the heart of the transformation are changes in the behavior of the business enterprise. In this paper, we make a threefold argument. First, while the going concern theory of the business enterprise is still important in the account of the economy as a continuing process of social provisioning, since a viable economy requires continuing business over historical time, more and more of the economy is being directed toward financial concerns. Second, as a consequence, the social provisioning process becomes more unstable and people's welfare becomes more vulnerable. Third, the concept of a going concern is, therefore, to be modified in order to put the business enterprise in the context of money manager capitalism.

Veblen's evolutionary economics of religion and the evolutionary psychology of religion

Purpose – Because belief in a supernatural agent with extraordinary power is rooted in psychology, Veblen's instinct psychology was the essential basis for his evolutionary economics of religion. The innate behavioral traits that Veblen called instincts in human nature are now recognized in evolutionary psychology as domain-specific mechanism that evolved as adaptations to enable human survival and reproduction. The authors aim to explain how the modern evolutionary psychology of religion provides a modern psychological basis for Veblen's evolutionary economics of religion. Design/methodology/approach – First, the authors review how Veblen's theory of an evolved human nature of instincts was applied to explain the origins of religion in primitive societies and remained a resilient force despite evolutionary erosion of institutional religion as science advanced. Second, the authors note how evolutionary psychology explains the origins of religion in terms of the functioning of domain-specific psychological mechanisms that evolved as adaptations for purposes other than religion. Findings – The similarities between Veblen's instinct psychology and the explanation of religion as by-products of domain-specific psychological mechanisms are sufficient to allow the conclusion that the evolutionary psychology of religion provides a modern psychological basis for Veblen's evolutionary economics of religion. Originality/value – An evolutionary economics of religion has a great social value if it provides credible explanations of both the origins of religious belief and innate tendency for religious belief to continue even as science refutes elements of religious doctrines. With a modern psychological basis, Veblen's evolutionary economics of religion accomplishes that purpose.

Cashmere

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to validate that young American experiencers perceive cashmere as the most luxurious animal fiber, to investigate if because expensive it is perceived as more luxurious (Veblen theory), to learn how they know about its intrinsic values, lastly to explore if articulating the story behind luxury goods can enhance shopping experience, thus building a sustainable competitive advantage for retailers. Design/methodology/approach – This research was conducted using a survey to gather quantitative data followed by focus group. A questionnaire was developed and distributed to a group of almost 200 young American experiencers. Findings – The results show that the subjects had a significant lack of knowledge about the provenance of cashmere (the fibre) and its intrinsic attributes. Once the subjects were told about the characteristics, the provenance and the whole process of the supply chain starting with the farmers combing the goats to the delivery of the end goods, it seems obvious that articulating the story behind luxury goods would enhance the shopping experience and provide a sustainable competitive advantage for retailers. Research limitations/implications – This survey was conducted on a sample of 196 respondents, from one specific geographic area. It would benefit from being extended to a wider scope of demographic and geographic including Europe and Asia. Originality/value – This study supports that time has come for retailers to shift from marketing visual images to the story telling.

Toward an Integrated Theory of Social Stratification

AbstractIn the discipline of sociology, Marx, Durkheim, and Weber represent “classical” approaches to the study of stratification, from one or another of which most modern theory derives. In economics, Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class represents an under‐utilized alternative to Marxian class analysis.The argument advanced in this article is that a close reading of the introductory chapter to Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class provides a useful framework for productive integration of the diverse traditions of stratification theory and class analysis descending in sociological thought from Marx, Durkheim, and Weber.

Veblen's Theory of Evolution and the Instinct of Workmanship

Veblen's Theory of Evolution and the Instinct of Workmanship

Debt, Innovations, and Deflation: The Theories of Veblen, Fisher, Schumpeter, and Minsky

Debt, Innovations, and Deflation: The Theories of Veblen, Fisher, Schumpeter, and Minsky

What Would Veblen Wear?

Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class is largely based on his explication of emulation whereby individuals of lower status imitate people of higher status. The proliferation of identity categories and the democratization of consumer credit complicate the application of emulation to contemporary consumer behavior. Veblen is ill-equipped to describe consumption related to social categories such as race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual identity. The phenomenon of dressing down within dominant American culture reveals the limits of Veblen's ideas when applied to less privileged social categories. An exclusive focus on individual choices ignores the interaction of structure and agency that characterizes the practice of consumption in contemporary society.

Wither Business Ideology: Revisiting Veblen's Theory of Engineers as Revolutionary Actors

Each major work of Veblen is a theoretical step taken further towards the solution of the problem already posed in The Theory of the Leisure Class: the continuity of the habit of invidious comparison that renders humans self-centric agents. Veblen, by juxtaposing “engineers” to the pecuniary class, sought to illustrate a contingency for the negation of invidious comparison, which may eradicate the legitimacy of business ideology and its reckless and futile end of accumulation of personal wealth.

Ithaca transfer: Veblen and the historical profession

Historiography has never been considered as a source of Veblen's thought. This essay draws on previously unknown archival evidence regarding Veblen's experience at Cornell, where he asked to be enrolled as a Ph.D. student in ‘History and Political Science’ in 1891, to shed light on his relationship with both British and American institutional historiography. It is argued that Veblen's studies at this university, under the influence of local historians, is crucial to understanding his later work, particularly his theory of the leisure class, for two fundamental reasons: (1) Cornell was unique for its tendency to combine the study of history with that of politics and society at a time when historiography tended to emancipate itself from the social sciences; (2) Cornell was one of the main epicentres for the diffusion of British historiography in America. Veblen's theory of the leisure class, to which he devoted his first article at Cornell, is thus presented as the fruit of his effort to reassess the historiographical idea of evolution, against its applications by philosophers, by insisting on the importance of path-dependent mentalities and by differentiating the evolutionary pattern followed by political and social institutions, on the one hand, from economic institutions on the other.

Capital, Power and Knowledge According to Thorstein Veblen: Reinterpreting the Knowledge-Based Economy

The works of Thorstein Bunde Veblen on knowledge and capital offer an original approach to account for the recent transformations of the capitalist system by disconnecting capital and productivity. Capital is no longer understood as means of production; rather, it becomes control over the means of production, and it takes the form of any socio-institutional power that increases firms' earning-capacity. Veblen's theory of capital becomes in fact a general theory of economic power. By using Veblen's theory of capital, the recent structural transformations that gave rise to the knowledge- based economy shouldn't be viewed in terms of new forms of productivity but rather in terms of the new ways and means for business interests to extend their control over industrial knowledge, and over the community in general.

Credit Card Use and Abuse: A Veblen ian Analysis

(2007). Credit Card Use and Abuse: A Veblen ian Analysis. Journal of Economic Issues: Vol. 41, Papers From The 2007 AFEE Meeting, pp. 567-574.

Cinderella’s Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding (review)

Reviewed by: Cinderella's Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding. Paul S. Ropp (bio) Dorothy Ko . Cinderella's Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2005. xix, 332 pp. Hardcover $29.95, ISBN 0-520-21884-1. Dorothy Ko's new history of footbinding is a wonderfully imaginative, wide-ranging, and provocative study of a subject long in need of revisionism. She argues persuasively that there is not one footbinding but many, and that therefore any history of footbinding has to recognize first and foremost the multifaceted complexity of the phenomenon. She handily meets this challenge. She also suggests at numerous points in her study that the study of footbinding has been dominated by antifootbinding views and by the discourse of men, so much so that we have seldom been privy to the views of the women themselves who had their feet bound and who in turn bound the feet of their daughters and granddaughters. Cinderella's Sisters is likely as close as we are to come to a study of footbinding from the perspective of the Chinese women themselves who carried out, managed, and experienced firsthand this widespread custom, with all the pains and benefits it brought them. In her Introduction Ko briefly notes earlier explanations of footbinding such as Freud's theory of fetishism, Veblen's theory of conspicuous consumption, and Laurel Bossen and Hill Gates's development of a Marxist-feminist view of the mystification of female labor. She also notes the widespread perception (as illustrated in Ida Pruitt's well-known biography of Ning Lao T'ai-t'ai) that women bound their feet mainly for the sake of upward mobility in seeking a good marriage.1 All these views illuminate the custom, Ko suggests, but they suffer from the assumption that footbinding was a single uniform custom with a single uniform cause. Ko has the advantage, over all these studies, in developing a multifaceted book-length treatment that ranges from antifootbinding discourses of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to scholarly works tracing the origins of the custom, to discussions of the aura of footbinding among male scholars during the custom's heyday in the Ming-Qing period, to an incisive discussion of women's shoes as items of fashion, concealment, and women's "self-fashioning." Just as footbinding was complicated, so was its termination. In part I, "The Body Exposed" (chapters 1-3), Ko provides "an alternative history" of the final abolition of footbinding, from the 1880s to the early 1940s. She notes these developments in terms of "three kinds of time: on the level of cosmology or episteme, [End Page 305] the cultural prestige or justification of footbinding; on the level of customs and conventions, footbinding as a social practice; and on the level of personal experience, footbinding as individual embodiment" (p. 11). As changes occurred on each of these levels in different ways at different times and places, there was a great deal of cultural turmoil and confusion in the ways the custom gradually died out. Both foreign missionaries and Chinese nationalists developed the antifoot-binding strategy of photographing and exposing the misshapen foot whose appeal had long depended on the allure of its concealment in the inner quarters and its covering with the elegant embroidered cloth shoe. One of Ko's most striking conclusions is that, with the exception of a few women (such as the radical Qiu Jin, beheaded by the Qing police in 1908), the Chinese abolitionists were primarily male, and their main arguments concerned not the pain of women but rather the weakness of the Chinese nation and the humiliation and embarrassment caused the nation by such a backward custom. She criticizes the antifootbinding movement as misogynist toward women with bound feet, indifferent to the pain caused by unbinding, and less successful than many have claimed. "One woman's pride and freedom was predicated on another woman's shame and bondage" (p. 68). Although not mentioned in her bibliography, an excellent complement to Ko's analysis that in my view corroborates many of her insights on the complexities and ironies of the turn-of-the-century antifootbinding movement is...

Remarx

Thorstein Veblen, like W. E. B. DuBois, mobilized the concept of psychological wages to explain working-class identification with the capitalist social and economic system. But while DuBois wrote about the wages of whiteness, Veblen concentrated, instead, upon the symbolic “benefits” provided by American nationalism, arguing that nationalism serves to reunite a community ruptured by inequality. This essay first examines Veblen's theory of nationalism as a form of social solidarity. In the concluding sections, it looks to organized labor for some possible alternative visions of community, politics, and “the people.”