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.     

Veblen and darwinism

The aim of this article is to show how Veblen understood and applied Darwinian principles to his analysis of the evolution of socio-economic institutions. At the core of Darwinism is a commitment to causal explanation, which Veblen adopted while not undermining his appreciation of the distinctively purposeful nature of human action. In addition, Veblen applied the Darwinian principles of variation, inheritance and selection to institutional evolution. However, despite his achievement, he did not develop an adequate or systematic theory in this area.     

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).     

Class Identification in Review: Past Perspectives and Future Directions

The rebirth of class analysis in the last two decades is due, in large part, to a theoretical shift in the field regarding class identification. The notable absence or weakness of class identities has led many theorists to proclaim the death of class, divorce class locations from identification, or rethink class identification as a relative, hierarchical, and individual concept. In each case, assumptions of collective class identification are laid to rest. As a result, some have called for a break from older models of class. In this article, we reexamine the contributions of classical class theory to the debate on collective class identification. By taking a closer look at the works of Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Veblen regarding class and collective identification, we suggest that not only are they still relevant to the current debate, but that taken together they form a diverse foundation from which many future directions are possible.     

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.     

Echoes of Veblen's theory of business enterprise in the later development of macroeconomics: Fisher's debt-deflation theory of great depressions and the financial instability theories of minsky and tobin

Irving Fisher's debt-deflation theory of great depressions, first published in 1932 and 1933, was invoked by Hyman Minsky and James Tobin as a crucial precursor of their theories of macroeconomic financial instability. This paper argues that Wesley Mitchell was right to perceive a close intellectual affinity between Fisher's debt-deflation theory and Thorstein Veblen's Theory of Business Enterprise (1904), and that this affinity also exists between Veblen (1904) and the analyses of Minsky and Tobin.     

Prophetic versus priestly sociology: The salient case study of Arthur K. Davis

Arthur K. Davis was President of the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association in 1975–1976 and in 1995 received the association’s Outstanding Contribution award. In Canada, he was particularly known for his article on “Canadian Society and History as Hinterland Versus Metropolis,” originally published in Ossenberg’s anthology of 1971. This article was frequently cited from 1972–1994 and was reprinted a number of times. Davis was also known for his articles on Thorstein Veblen, which continue to receive citation. Davis’ career merits careful study for at least two reasons. The first is that he was a Ph.D. product of the early Harvard sociology graduate program, which has received much less attention than it deserves from sociological historians (unlike the Chicago School). As such, Davis studied under of Talcott Parsons, Pitirim Sorokin, and Robert K. Merton. The second reason is that Davis’ career clearly illustrates the usefulness of Robert W. Friedrichs’ distinction between the priestly and prophetic roles that sociologists may fulfill. Davis’ career started under the influence of a priestly orientation (as symbolized by his doctoral supervisor Talcott Parsons) and then gravitated to a prophetic stance as influenced by Pitirim Sorokin, Paul M. Sweezy, and, more distantly, by Marx and Veblen. Since this transition took place just when the Cold War was falling, his career reveals some of the pitfalls that await the prophetic sociologist in times that favor security and conservatism rather than activism and change.     

Repositioning Risk in Social Work Education: Reflections Arising from the Threat of SARS to Social Work Students in Hong Kong during their Field Practicum

The social work profession has always been involved in dealing with uncertainty and risk in the life politics of clients. However, it is not easy for young social work students to translate this philosophical disposition into their real life practice with clients. In spring 2003, when the SARS epidemic broke out in Hong Kong, a group of social work students from the Chinese University of Hong Kong were doing their fieldwork practicum. Suddenly confronted by a collective sense of risk in their role as social workers, the students went through a period of unrest, as performing their helping duties brought with it a simultaneous exposure to personal risk. This paper is based on four focus group interviews with these social work students, to understand how they processed their experience of risk during their exposure to the SARS crisis, and how they connected the experience to their social work practice with clients. It is found that the predicament arising from the exposure to personal risk brought about by the SARS crisis during the students' field placement engendered the reflective process that enabled a renewed and personalized meaning of professionalism. The results provide a basis for reflection among social work educators on the role of risk in the training of prospective social workers, and on how social work education can better prepare students for practice in a high‐risk environment.     

Evidence-Based Practice: A Common Definition Matters

The Geriatric Social Work Practicum Partnership Program was funded to attract graduate students to the field of aging and to strengthen field education in geriatric social work. Rotation was selected to achieve the program's goals to provide students with exposure to the spectrum of care in geriatric social work services. This paper describes the program's experience with rotation, which is the planned and systematic movement of students between two or more field practicum sites and supervision from more than one field instructor. Implementing rotation required the establishment of a university–community partnership. Students' positive reaction to rotation indicates that it warrants further implementation and evaluation     

Veblen’s theory of the leisure class revisited: implications for optimal income taxation

Several previous studies have demonstrated the importance of relative consumption comparisons for public policy. Yet, almost all of them have ignored the role of leisure for status comparisons. Inspired by Veblen (The theory of the leisure class. Macmillan, New York, 1899), this paper assumes that people care about their relative consumption and that leisure has a displaying role in making relative consumption more visible, based on a two-type model of optimal income taxation. While increased importance of relative consumption typically implies higher marginal income tax rates, in line with previous research, the effect of leisure-induced consumption visibility is to make the income tax more regressive in terms of ability.     

The Integration of Personal and Professional Selves: Developing Students' Critical Awareness in Social Work Practice

How social work students incorporate personal and professional selves in the contexts of field education represents a cornerstone of effective and sustainable practice. This paper presents a qualitative component of a study that tracked 15 third-year bachelor of social work students across their first field placement to document their use of self, critical reflections and experiential learning. The project examined students' assessed ‘use of self’ assignments to understand their capacity for and development of critical awareness across this placement. Students were most articulate in being able to identify stressful situations that arose from placement in terms of what they were thinking (mind) and feeling (emotion) and to a much lesser extent to what they were sensing (body). Over time, students demonstrated a growing critical awareness to better identify and respond to their self-reported tensions. The findings provide developmental insights into how students integrate personal and professional selves and potentially shift from reflective and reflexive practices to incorporating praxis in their work. Through considering the linkages between self and practice, this paper explores student experiences whilst on placement and the associated developmental tasks of critical awareness.     

What's on Their Minds? The South African Child Welfare Academic Agenda from 2001 to 2010

Social work teaching and research is assumed to impact significantly on practice, readying students for employment and investigating areas relevant to practice. In South Africa, the historic divergence between the academic agenda and population needs is significant. In a context of transformation towards developmental social welfare, this paper investigates the extent to which tertiary education as well as research agendas match what South African child welfare practitioners have identified as priorities in the field. In a study examining trends and drivers in South African child welfare, it was found that the curriculum was largely being informed by the same trends that shaped practice. However, the research agenda differed markedly from the issues concerning practitioners. Also, practitioners thought that new graduates were ill-equipped to deal with practice demands in resource-poor and transforming (post-apartheid) environments. It is recommended that South African academics and practitioners ensure that child welfare curricula, academic enquiry and practice demands overlap more closely in order to better prepare novice social workers and provide leading research. With globalization and the increased need to respond to diverse populations, it becomes critical that social work education is reviewed both in the north and south to ensure its relevance for practice.     

The end of the world as we know it: Popular music's cultural mobility

Abstract

Popular music has moved to the centre of economic life, suggesting a shift in the political economy of advanced societies. The transition has been marked by a concomitant shift in the centrality of popular music in social life, assisted by new technologies. More importantly, the changes have been brought about by the reorganization of record company ownership and activity since the 1980s. This paper suggests that cultural studies could apply aspects of the research and analysis methods developed in institutional economics, to a study of the relationship between cultural and economic formations. Institutional economics, especially as proposed by Thorstein Veblen, provides a pragmatic critique for cultural industries in an era of globalization and rising corporate power. In this paper I have used institutional economics to illustrate how the shift in the organization of popular music has taken place within the corporate economy. The use of popular music as a feature of the corporate economy has involved the expansion of all forms of entertainment into the information economy. This convergence of activities and interests located in and around popular music is described by the term ‘cultural mobility’.     

Video-Based Studies of Work Practice

The use of the visual, let alone video, is surprisingly rare within social scientific studies of work and organisations. Nevertheless there is an emerging corpus of research that use video recordings, augmented by field work, as their principal data; recordings that provide access to the fine details of work as it is accomplished within everyday organisational settings. They include studies of work in a broad range of domains, including call centres, mobile offices, operating theatres, construction sites and control centres. This paper outlines the nature of these video-based studies of work and organisation and highlights some of their major contributions to our understanding of issues such as the nature of skill and expertise, the use of technology and the organisation of teamwork. It also reflects on the impact that these studies, and this approach, are having within the practical fields of industrial and market research.     

Developing people in a network of relational practices: reflections on the role of social work education

The mission of social work education in Flanders is threefold: to deliver education, to conduct research and to provide services to society. In our opinion social work education has a critical and liberating function towards society and it must stimulate and develop a critical attitude amongst students. In this article we first focus on the educational dimension of social work education as we practise this in one institute. Next we describe how we realise our objectives as a social work education institute in relation to the professional field. The central concept of our vision is social work as a relational practice.     

Responding by degrees: surveying the education and practice landscape

In all four countries of the United Kingdom social work education has been subject to detailed review, a process culminating in the launch in England in September 2003 of the new social work degree. This paper surveys this process of change, which is located within the broader social policy modernisation agenda. Those working within social work education have been able to exercise positive influence on the review and can draw comfort from some of the outcomes. Nonetheless, critical reflections are offered about the change process and the organisational framework that surrounds it. The disjunction between the policy vision and the reality of state social work, together with competing perspectives within policy trends, are clearly mapped. The paper concludes that the landscape is not as inhospitable as once feared but continued vigilance is required by social work education and those higher education institutions accredited to provide it.     

Environmental Sustainability and Social Work: A Rural Australian Evaluation of Incorporating Eco-Social Work in Field Education

Climate change poses significant threat to the wellbeing of global society. Addressing this change has as yet generated no fixed blueprint for social work practice and education. This paper reports on a formative evaluation of one Australian initiative to address this transformative opening in social work field education. Prompted by service users' and workers' experience of the impact of drought, a rurally located social work course team amended the field education curriculum to include a focus on Environment and Sustainability. This learning goal was added to the existing learning goals derived from the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) Practice Standards. Students and field supervisors were surveyed on their experience of meeting this new learning goal. While most expressed confidence in understanding the concepts involved, they clearly lacked assurance in interpreting these in practice encounters. Considering their qualitative input suggests that this topic is making a transition from being on the margins of social work to becoming mainstream. Their open-ended responses indicate that the incorporation of environmental sustainability into practice is at a threshold stage of development. Further enactment of eco-social work at the local level is concluded to be supported by using a transformative learning framework in facilitating critical reflection and collaborative dialogue for effective change.     

Co-supervision of social work students: A model for meeting the future needs of the profession

This article presents co-supervision as an effective and efficient model for field education of social work students. In our current climate of scarce resources and with a changing workforce that is increasingly feminised and part-time, this model provides a framework for efficient resource allocation by sharing the responsibility of field education among more than one social work supervisor. We will describe a model of co-supervision that we have developed over a period of 6 years. We will be using the findings from our own exploratory study for this model along with practice-based reflection to support our proposal that co-supervision is an innovative and beneficial model for field work education of social work students.     

The Problem of Pseudoscience in Social Work Continuing Education

The National Association of Social Workers requires social workers to obtain continuing education (CE) after they receive their social work degrees. A large and profitable industry that has emerged catering to this need for CE that is particularly focused on the needs of licensed social workers. Quality control mechanisms in place to monitor the content and delivery of CE approved by the field of social work is relatively lax, and as a result a considerable number of social work CE programs convey content that can be labeled as pseudoscientific. We provide illustrations of currently approved social work CE courses that provide training in a variety of bizarre and unsupported assessment methods and treatments that are pseudoscientific.     

Social Work Students ‘Juggling’ Field Placement

Field education is widely acknowledged as a central component of social work education. However, it requires a substantial commitment of time and energy from students which can present challenges to students who have multiple responsibilities. Based on a literature review conducted in preparation for doctoral research into social work student experience of juggling multiple roles and responsibilities with field placement, this article summarises what is known about the challenges they face and what helps them to complete placement. The findings have implications for students, schools of social work and field placement agencies. Further research should provide guidance for professional social work bodies, schools of social work, field educators and students.