Showing papers in "International Review of Sociology in 2004"

Cultural Consumption Research: Review of Methodology, Theory, and Consequence

Abstract: (2004). Cultural consumption research: review of methodology, theory, and consequence. International Review of Sociology: Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 11-29.

Veblen and Darwinism

Abstract: 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.

Convergence or divergence? A multidimensional approach to healthcare reforms

Abstract: (2004). Convergence or divergence? A multidimensional approach to healthcare reforms. International Review of Sociology: Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 171-203.

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

Abstract: 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

Paradigms for analysis of social institutions: A case for sociological institutionalism

Abstract: This paper makes a case for sociological institutionalism, particularly its Veblenian variant or connection. This is attempted against a background of the surge of renewed interest in analyzing institutions within modern social science, especially economics and sociology. This is indicated by the emergence of the new institutional economics as the (modified) neoclassical approach to institutions and the revival of economic sociology with its conception of the institutional embeddedness of the economy, respectively. Still, many pertinent differences between economic and sociological institutionalism are overlooked or minimized in the current literature. By exploring such differences, the paper helps span a gap in the literature in which comparative analyses of economic and sociological approaches to institutions are rare.

International statistics and social structure: the case of the Human Development Index

Abstract: Our statistics are too much with us. Measure for measure, we lay waste the opportunity to ask how the measures emerge and become institutionalized in the professional field. Some statistical measurements have become institutionalized, taken-for-granted entities, while similar measures have failed to gain widespread usage. For example, the number of people living on less than a dollar per day is commonly used as a way to count the number of poor among us; Gross National Product (GNP) accounts for the wealth of nations. But the development of human capacities for a long time seemed esoteric and too subjective to be considered on a worldwide scale. How did human development become institutionalized as a statistical measurement and a taken-forgranted category of thought? How do the dominant worldviews and the social structure affect the emergence, form, and institutionalization of international development statistics?

The impact area of political communication: citizenship faced with public discourse

Abstract: (2004). The impact area of political communication: citizenship faced with public discourse. International Review of Sociology: Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 245-259.

Determinants of attitudes held by Irish catholic and protestant women towards gender roles, maternal employment and social perceptions of women in Irish society

Abstract: This paper is drawn from my doctoral thesis, which analyses similarities and differences in the social and religious attitudes of modern Catholic and Protestant (Church of Ireland) women in the Republic of Ireland. My work is new in that it studies the attitudes of a female sample that is stratified according to religious tradition (Catholic/Protestant). The sample is also stratified by age (21–46/47–70 years) and location (rural/urban). Irish sociological and feminist scholarship has produced diverse work concerning many facets of Irish women's lives, but little research has specifically focused on the attitudes of Irish Protestant and Catholic women as distinct groups. Qualitative and quantitative questionnaires were used to study the social and religious attitudes of respondents living in 12 counties throughout the Republic of Ireland. Twelve distinct attitudinal factors emerged from factor analysis. Themes contained in these factors included: 1. •Perception's of social attitudes to women in Irish soci...

Diversity, Civic Virtues and Ecological Austerity

Abstract: A single global culture and a unique set of world institutional arrangements, based on an ever-increasing consumption of natural resources and environmental pollution is not sustainable nor can be sustained. In this paper some key ideological and moral com­ponents of the urgently required changes towards a culture of sustainability are examined, together with the implications, difficulties and requirements for its embodiment both in individual practices and in social institutions. In particular, it is argued that the values and attitudes which promote the protection and integration of diversity—both cultural and biological—and restrain the current trends in natural resource consumption and environmental pollution are to be developed by the citizenry if global societies are to survive. In the domains of political participation, rational dialogue and civic virtue, sustainability is akin to the inherited republican ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. Sustainability must now become an indispensable fo...

New forms of public space and new generations

Abstract: The architecture of this brief paper is elementary: some terms interdependent among themselves on the basis of an analytical strategy that tries to underline the utility of a sociological reasoning on the public space, in an extremely actual cultural and political prospective, are put one next to the other. The first brick is represented by a synthetical and theoretical excursus of the public space. This in order to verify the relevance of the concept, not only in the social sciences domain, but also for the important political implications that accompany its evolution. The second brick is formed by some observations dedicated to the formation of the public European space. In other words, political and cultural data are inserted, of extraordinary historical relevance, reflecting transformations of the norms and rules. It is the heart of the modern public space, that is to say the democratic political culture, in comparison to a binary dynamic on the one side is the crisis of the nation-state, on the other the progressive impact of the formation of a political–institutional above-nation entity, such as the European Union. The third brick recovers some data on the tiring formation of a civic identity of the young generations and of their cautiousness in contributing in some way to the building of a public space, but above all in reproducing the definition of this space that had been given by preceding generations. This last element is relevant because it introduces, even if cautiously, a dimension of prevision, a dimension that represents endemic data of sociological analysis, conceived also as an instrument best apt at designing the near future’s society in Europe, but not only in Europe.1

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

Abstract: 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.

Iconoclastic eugenics: thorstein veblen on racial diversity and cultural nomadism1

Abstract: The name of Thorstein B. Veblen has entered the canon of citable authorities again in recent years as a consequence of increasing interest in evolutionary thinking in the social sciences. His 1898 essay Why is Economics not an Evolutionary Science? can indeed be seen as the opening shot in a wide-ranging alternative to neoclassical theoretical hegemony in economics, a term Veblen incidentally also invented. Schumpeterians, institutionalists, innovation-system analysts, and evolutionists of all colours have subsequently found kinship with Veblen’s insistence on dynamic social and economic theory. His evolutionist and institutionalist aspects are the ones most in vogue these days, but the anthropological and ethnological bridge Veblen constructs between these two parts of his work is seldom, if ever, crossed in the historiography of his writings. Veblen even begins his inquiry into evolutionary economics with a quote from the French anthropologist M.G. de Lapouge: ‘Anthropology is destined to revolutionise the political and the social sciences as radically as bacteriology has revolutionised the science of medicine’ (1898, p. 373), but few stop to ask themselves what he actually meant. Among the very few comments by anthropologists on Veblen’s use of their material, we find one by Franz Boas’ student J. Melville Herskovits. Boas was a colleague of Veblen at the University of Chicago and had a notable influence on his ideas (Jennings and Waller, 1998, p. 197). Herskovits noted that Veblen’s ‘employment of anthropological data was as unsatisfactory as was his use of psychological material. Yet though his presuppositions might be untenable, his conclusions were brilliantly valid’ (1936, p. 353). The verdict on Veblen by anthropologists must be appreciated in light of the great changes affecting the science at the beginning of the twentieth century. Ann Mayhew has explored Veblen’s untimeliness in the context of the general movement of anthropology away from historical processes towards detailed studies of the anthropological ‘now’ (1998, p. 455), but it is perhaps more important for understanding Veblen, as opposed to his legacy, to note the bipolarization of the discipline fuelling these developments. Two main groups crystallized in the American anthropology of the period, one which was biologically deterministic aligned with Madison Grant and the Galton Society, the other culturally deterministic and led by Franz Boas and the ‘Boasians’ (Spiro, 2002). Rather curiously, Veblen cited authorities from both camps, drawing extensively from the work of biological determinists such as McDougall International Review of Sociology*/Revue Internationale de Sociologie, Vol. 14, No. 3, 2004

Max Weber’s sociology of law as a turning point of his methodological approach

Abstract: (2004). Max Weber’s sociology of law as a turning point of his methodological approach. International Review of Sociology: Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 143-150.

Colonialization and crime: contemporary consequences of invasion on indigenous peoples in rural places

Abstract: (2004). Colonialization and crime: contemporary consequences of invasion on indigenous peoples in rural places. International Review of Sociology: Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 51-71.

Veblen and the entrepreneur

Abstract: 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.

Back to Adorno and beyond Habermas: social action and critical theory

Abstract: non-utopian social critique involved within the concrete contradictions of social action and aware that there is no final solution to these contradictions, but only partial, temporary solutions which must each time be adapted to the continuous changes of social situations. This leads to conceiving critical theory as a tool for enhancing the capacity, both individual and collective, to deal with contradictions rather than in terms of an abstract criterion of judgement, oriented towards imposing an ideal normative order on the manifold aspects of social reality. 01 CIRS 0390670042000186734.fm Page 4 Monday, March 1, 2004 2:52 PM

Gender, class and power in Japan: does social origin affect women’s access to power in employment?

Abstract: This paper looks at how far women’s access to positions of power in the labour market is independent of class background, looking at the case of Japanese women in professional and managerial employment. It questions both the conventional approach to the class analysis of women, as well as the dismissal of the concept of class in understanding women and power. Using three different indicators of social origin, based on father’s employment position, mother’s work status and employment position, and parents’ cultural capital, it argues that women’s access to positions of power in employment is not independent of social origin. On the contrary, a privileged class background was more important for women than it was for men in gaining entry into professional and managerial employment. The paper also looks at how the inclusion of women in the anlaysis effects our understanding of class, and proposes the use of both conventional and alternative theoretical and methodological approaches to understand the complex relationships between gender, class and power.

Between Darwin and kant: Veblen's theory of causality

Abstract: The aim of this article is to investigate and define the sources of Veblen's theory of causality. In his perspective, evolutionary explanatory patterns of observed phenomena are based on a causal nexus defined as ‘unteleological and opaque’. Because of the denial of any teleological explanation, Veblen's concept of ‘progress’ appears to be Darwinian, rather than Spencerian, even though there is no doubt on the relevance of Spencer's work in Veblen's intellectual biography. But Veblen's theoretical system seems to have a Kantian matrix too, as already suggested by Vianello (1961), Edgell (2001) and Viano (2003). And we shall try to show the interaction between Darwinian evolutionism and Kant's conception of finalism in Veblen's theory of causality.

Veblen's theory applied to information specialists

Abstract: This paper examines the paradoxical class situation of information specialists in the post-industrial society as both professionals and employees. It describes and analyses the ‘technocratic’ authority wielded by them and their mode of consciousness. It's assessed whether these workers function as the vanguard of a new style of democratised work or buttressed the position of managerial authority. It has been found that the subjects experience a class situation that is somewhat more empowered than the industrial or corporate models, but do not differ substantially from that of the production workers in industrial society. Their power, prestige, privilege and status essentially camouflage the subjects’ compliance to hierarchical authority. The subjects exhibit awareness of their power, but essentially they direct their energies toward task attainment and individual mobility. Lacking an orientation toward structure change, the information specialists do not appear to fit the notion of a vanguard group. From ...

Veblen's critique of political economy

Abstract: Thorstein Veblen has been considered more often among sociologists than among economists. The partitioning of knowledge into different fields happens to be self-reflexively suggested by the developments of knowledge itself and influenced even by academic interests: any innovative thinker cannot but feel it as tight-fitting. What matters, however, is that Veblen’s theoretical and methodological achievements have rarely been recognized and often set aside, both during his lifetime and subsequently, up to present day. Joseph Dorfman (1934, p. 197) reports that Veblen was disappointed at the prevalent reception of his Theory of the Leisure Class as a satiric essay. Mainstream economists and some historians of economic thought are still inclined to undervalue his theoretical contribution; accordingly, they do not acknowledge institutional economics as an alternative paradigm, but merely insist on its demand for empirical data (see, e.g., Yonay, 1998). A further problem, which will be not dealt with here, is that to diverse interpretations of Veblen’s and ‘classic’ institutional thought correspond to diverse ways of understanding its relation to neo-institutionalism, and neoinstitutionalism itself. I would like to suggest a few considerations in favor of the thesis that Veblen’s reflection about capitalist economy, and the concepts and method of economic science, results in a consistent theory and fundamental methodological suggestions. Economic evolution and economic theories are understood by Veblen as being mutually linked, and explained in an institutional way, as aspects of a social process, which is both historically contingent and meaningful as a whole. His attitude and achievements are thus typical of the ‘critique of political economy’; they contrast sharply with neoclassical economics, and sometimes seem divergent also from current institutional thought. The contribution I propose here to the debate consists essentially in a commentary of two articles of Veblen’s, ‘Why is Economics not an Evolutionary Science?’ (1898) and ‘Industrial and Pecuniary Employments’ (1901); both belong to the period Veblen spent in Chicago, and are particularly representative, in my opinion, of a fruitful and innovative phase of his work.

From staple rent to conspicuous rent: Veblen's case for a new theory of distribution

Abstract: Happily, there is nothing in the laws of value which remains for the present or any future writer to clear up: the theory of the subject is complete. (J. S. Mill, The Principles of Political Econom...

The concept of interest value theory in thorstein veblen as it emerges from some of his polemical writings

Abstract: As Claudio Napoleoni, the untimely departed Italian economist, observed some years ago, three are the expositions of the economic theory of value held as classic: Marx’s Theories of Surplus Value, Böhm-Bawerk’s Capital and Interest: A Critical History of Economic Theory, and J. A. Schumpeter’s monumental History of Economic Analysis . Among these works, the second one, too often mistaken as a merely scholastic excursus, is maybe the less known. Böhm-Bawerk’s contribution consists instead in an accurate and philologically rigorous reorganization of the theories of interest, capital, and, therefore, value, to be read as an introduction to The Positive Theory of Capital of 1888. The importance of this essay transcends indeed its introductory character, at least because it contains the first elements of that very critique of Marx’s theory of exploitation Böhm-Bawerk was to develop some years later, in 1896. Schumpeter avows that / every time and very naturally / it happened sto him to put the name of Marx next to Böhm-Bawerk’s. ‘The comparison with Marx always came to me spontaneously. And if somebody might find that strange, the reason can be found in Marx’s name being circumfused by the ardor of political passion [. . .] Such a thing does not happen with Böhm-Bawerk. He wants to be only a scientist. Not even a leaf in his garden is shacked by the stormy winds of politics. [. . .] He even forsakes any sociological background’. It is surprising how such a sociologically aware economist does not realize how impossible it is to handle a text without referring to its context. It is however clear that, aiming to support the parallelism between Marx and Böhm-Bawerk, Schumpeter does not retreat, seeming willing to accept rather carelessly some oversimplification. ‘As scientists, they seeked the same thing. [. . .] They both drew from others the basic argument of their theories of value: Menger was to Böhm-Bawerk what Ricardo had been to Marx’. Schumpeter could have spotted more significant convergences between Marx and Böhm-Bawerk: both of them are deeply and continually involved in the study of capitalism, but, in their writings, the capitalists are absent as social actors. According to Schumpeter, ‘what lies in the background of Böhm-Bawerk theoretic scenario is the character of the entrepreneur. Sure enough, his functions as a manager and speculator are mentioned; however, it is spoken of him more often for a characteristic that belongs to him more frequently than necessarily, i.e., for his role of capitalist, of industrialist working with his own capital’. Curiously enough, Schumpeter seems not to be aware of the contradiction International Review of Sociology*/Revue Internationale de Sociologie, Vol. 14, No. 3, 2004

Mr. Veblen's strictures on women

Abstract: Every theory, which challenges from a new perspective the way we look at things, is perceived as eccentric, and somehow disturbing when formulated for the first time. This was the case for Veblen, ...

Veblen in the classroom: A view from his students’ notes

Abstract: This article addresses Veblen’s consistency in teaching theoretical economics. It presents material from the Dorfman Collection at Columbia University and covers courses taught at Chicago, Stanford, and Missouri between 1898 and 1918. The subject focuses on students’ notes from Veblen’s classes on Economic Factors in Civilization. The courses articulated a peculiarly Veblenian point of view as attested by Allyn Young, executive officer of economics at Stanford. He refused to take over this class when Veblen was dismissed in 1909 with the words, ‘that course is taught in no other place and by no other man / it is Dr. Veblen’s own course.’ Veblen was consistent in interpreting the application of the developing fields of anthropology and of ethnography to an institutional approach to economic phenomena. His purpose was to explain modern economic behavior from a scientific point of view, a point of view which he did not find among the economists of his day. His subject matter in these courses varied through the years but almost always covered prehistoric Europe, Minoan civilization, and the Native American studies that were in process under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution. A student note stated that it was ‘necessary to go outside western European civilization because that society is too complex to reveal ‘genetic’ illustrations’. Thus, he would turn to the Native American cultures that were most familiar and closest to hand for glimpses of the primitive. Veblen’s economics was summed up by a student, ‘Economics in Veblen’s opinion deals with certain conditions given at present with the existence of certain institutions, which must be understood. Hence to analyze the situation, economics must first understand the given institutions, and to do that it must examine them and explain them. In this way economics becomes the question of growth of modern institutions’. In order to examine Veblen’s theoretical consistency, two of the above words require definition. Most significant for Veblen’s analysis is his use of the word ‘factor’ in the course title. In a 1910 paper Hugo de Vries coined the word pangens, shortened to genes in 1911, to identify units of hereditary transmission. Gregor Mendel, whom de Vries had discovered, had called these units factors. Since factor was the only word available to him when the courses were inaugurated, Veblen’s choice of the word signified that the courses would provide a genetic approach to economics. Notes from one of his classes begin with the statement from Veblen that the ‘modern scientific aim is to explain in terms of genesis and growth’ It is not surprising then that the earliest set of student notes International Review of Sociology*/Revue Internationale de Sociologie, Vol. 14, No. 3, 2004