Desperately seeking social approval: Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen and the moral limits of capitalist culture

Adam Smith and Thorstein Veblen shared much in matters of economic ontology. Both dismissed the very notion of an autonomous economic self and instead investigated the processes through which self and other are mutually constituted under changing cultural traditions of individual aspiration. Their strikingly similar critiques of status-oriented consumption and concern for the moral basis of the market economy are established in this manner. However, the political implications of their analyses point in different directions, with Veblen being the more radical. The Smithian individual can always use spectatorial insights to assert through genuinely praiseworthy behaviour personal moral distance from social norms of status-oriented consumption. The Veblenian individual, by contrast, has no such capacity for elevating abstract moral principles above socially-situated conduct, as mind and environment co-evolve in line with changing material circumstances of life. For Veblen, the rise of status-oriented consumption itself acted as a form of moral self-education that more deeply entrenched the social norms of ownership out of which it arose, thus the impossibility of an autonomous economic self was matched by the impossibility of an autonomous moral self. To his way of thinking, moral degradation in conspicuous consumption was irredeemably inscribed into the whole cultural structure of capitalism.     

Veblen and the entrepreneur

Ideas originating from the pioneering work of Thorstein Veblen provide the theoretical backbone of this paper. His work emerged and acquired a position of prominence more or less at the same time with the publication of seminal contributions by Schumpeter, Knight and Hayek in the field of entrepreneurial studies. However, Veblen failed to influence the evolution of ideas in the emerging field of study. In fact, this is the first systematic attempt in deploying the conceptual ‘tools’ developed by Veblen in entrepreneurship research. More specifically, this paper sets out to provide an alternative conceptualisation of the entrepreneur that does not simply relax but breaks away from the restrictive assumptions that constrained the development of the field in economics. In doing so, particular emphasis is placed upon the interface between agency and context.     

Veblen and Weber, on the Spirit of Capitalism

Abstract Sociology has benefited from inquiries into the theoretical potential in the writings associated with individual 'authors', as well as from the examination of research 'topics' through the works of two or more writers. Of these complementary approaches, the latter provides the basis for this essay. The focus here is on the 'spirit' of modern capitalism from the standpoint of the formulations by Veblen and Weber. These writers provide alternative hypotheses on the decisive variable instrumental to the spirit of capitalism, namely, technology and religion respectively. In most other respects there is remarkable similarity in the two writings. The present analysis has enabled the comprehension of the spirit of capitalism in terms of four sequential phases. These are: early capitalism (capitalism as spirit); early-modern capitalism (capitalism as spirit and economic organization); late-modern capitalism (spiritless capitalism); and post-modernity (society in need of a spirit).     

Some observations on the history of large philanthropic foundations in Britain and the United States

Large philanthropic foundations such as those which first developed in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century had four characteristics: (a) the aim of contributing to the public good; (b) applying science and scientific method to human affairs, interpreting science broadly; (c) using great wealth to pursue these purposes; and (d) seeking public recognition of their charitable status in doing so. Between 1870 and 1930 the large foundation emerged as a major social institution, and under the influence of their officers began to be major patrons of applied social science for public policy purposes. Critics of foundations have charged that they were private bodies without external accountability; they were secretive, undemocratic, unrepresentative and indeed pillars of the ruling class. Nevertheless, foundations have exercised a disproportionate influence upon public policy research and have sought to apply fundamental knowledge to tackling social problems. They represent the institutionalisation of knowledge-based social engineering.     

Some observations on weekend foster home visitation as a step out of the institution.

A program under which boys in a residential treatment home paid weekend visits to foster homes proved a successful method of testing the boys' readiness to leave the institution and return to the community.     

Some empirical observations of relevance to the analysis of union wage determination

Six important empirical characteristics of the union sector need to be incorporated into future research on wage determination. These are 1) the extent of unionization, 2) the statistical correlates of unionization, 3) divergent trends in union and nonunion earnings, 4) union/nonunion wage differentials, 5) the determinants of union and nonunion wage change, and 6) wage imitation. Examination of these characteristics suggests the following about union wage determination. Union wages have advanced relative to nonunion since the mid 1950s, despite relative shrinkage of the union sector. Union wage changes show less sensitivity to business-cycle pressures than nonunion. Limited spheres of wage imitation surround certain major union negotiations. These observations can be fitted into recent analyses of wage determination under long-term employer employee relationships, and have relevance for anti-inflation policy. Research for this paper was undertaken while the author was a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and was supported by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Views expressed should not be attributed to the Brookings Institution, its staff or trustees.     

The socioculturalist agenda in economics: Critical remarks of Thorstein Veblen's legacy

The article identifies a cluster of heterodox economists, especially followers of Thorstein Veblen, who are critical of the neoclassical axiom of well-defined preferences. They generally have a problem with the reductionist reasoning that preferences of agents are constituted prior to social interaction. Some of them are proposing somewhat well-defined preferences deduced instead from the tastes of the reference groups with whom the agent identifies. The article does not question the relevance, with respect to economics, of the preferences of groups. Rather, it challenges a muscular view of such preferences which is being uncritically borrowed, inter alia, from functionalist sociology and substantivist economic anthropology. Sociologists and anthropologists in general have recently become, from diverse perspectives, critical of the conception of sociocultural tastes as hegemonic. The basic thrust of the article is that the socioculturalist agenda broadly subscribes to a biological/social dichotomy which neglects that tastes also arise from psychobiological developmental processes.     

The socioculturalist agenda in economics: Critical remarks of Thorstein Veblen's legacy

The article identifies a cluster of heterodox economists, especially followers of Thorstein Veblen, who are critical of the neoclassical axiom of well-defined preferences. They generally have a problem with the reductionist reasoning that preferences of agents are constituted prior to social interaction. Some of them are proposing somewhat well-defined preferences deduced instead from the tastes of the reference groups with whom the agent identifies. The article does not question the relevance, with respect to economics, of the preferences of groups. Rather, it challenges a muscular view of such preferences which is being uncritically borrowed, inter alia, from functionalist sociology and substantivist economic anthropology. Sociologists and anthropologists in general have recently become, from diverse perspectives, critical of the conception of sociocultural tastes as hegemonic. The basic thrust of the article is that the socioculturalist agenda broadly subscribes to a biological/social dichotomy which neglects that tastes also arise from psychobiological developmental processes.     

Global economic restructuring and international migration: some observations based on the Mexican and Central American experience

"The purpose of this article is to explore the relationship between processes of global economic restructuring and international migration through an examination of Mexican and Central American immigration to the U.S. and the experiences of Central American and Mexican immigrants in the U.S. This relationship is analysed as one of mutual causation: on the one hand, global restructuring affects conditions in both sending and receiving countries (it is not only a factor in emigration but also in the economic and political receptivity to immigrants at their point of destination); on the other, international migration in turn has an important impact on countries of origin, receiving countries, and the relationship between them." (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA)     

How to fight the ‘Methodenstreit’? Veblen and Weber on economics,psychology and action

There have been comparative discussions about Thorstein Veblen and Max Weber before, but not quite from the most appropriate viewpoint. The present paper treats them as theorists of action, in social and economic analysis, and this perspective yields some interesting new findings. Both theorists are to be taken as participants in the great Methodenstreit in economics, 100 years ago, and it is Veblen who suggests a more radical solution to this dispute, he suggests its final abolishment. The main difference between Veblen and Weber is in their respective appreciations of the role of psychology in social analysis. Weber does not think it important, but in so thinking he misses the viewpoint of evolutionary psychology that Veblen endorses. Accordingly, both of these classical thinkers are to be considered as theorists of action, but so that it is Veblen who proffers a more general theory.