Thorstein Bunde Veblen ( THOR-styn VEH-blən; July 30, 1857 – August 3, 1929) was an American economist and sociologist who, during his lifetime, emerged as a well-known critic of capitalism. In his best-known book, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), Veblen coined the concepts of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure. Veblen laid the foundation for the perspective of institutional economics. Contemporary economists still theorize Veblen's distinction between "institutions" and "technology", known as the Veblenian dichotomy. As a leading intellectual of the Progressive Era in the US, Veblen attacked production for profit. His emphasis on conspicuous consumption greatly influenced economists who engaged in non-Marxist critiques of fascism, capitalism, and technological determinism.
Biography
Early life and family background Veblen was born on July 30, 1857, in Cato, Wisconsin, to Norwegian-American immigrant parents, Thomas Veblen and Kari Bunde. He was the sixth of twelve children.
His parents had emigrated from Valdres, Norway, to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on September 16, 1847, with few funds and no knowledge of English. They migrated to Milwaukee via Drammen, Hamburg and Quebec. The trip took four and a half months. Despite their limited circumstances as immigrants, Thomas Veblen's knowledge in carpentry and construction, paired with his wife's supportive perseverance, allowed them to establish a family farm in Rice County, Minnesota, where they moved in 1864. (The Veblen farmstead, located near the town of Nerstrand, became a National Historic Landmark in 1981.) Kari Bunde was not formally trained as a physician, but she frequently provided medical treatment to surrounding areas. Veblen began his schooling at age five. Although Norwegian was his first language, he learned English from neighbors and at school. His parents also learned to speak English fluently, though they continued to read predominantly Norwegian literature with and around their family on the farmstead. The family farm eventually grew more prosperous, allowing Veblen's parents to provide their children with formal education. Unlike most immigrant children of the time, Veblen and all of his siblings received training in lower schools and went on to receive higher education at nearby Carleton College. Veblen's sister, Emily, was reputedly the first daughter of Norwegian immigrants to graduate from an American college. The eldest Veblen child, Andrew Veblen, ultimately became a professor of physics at the University of Iowa and the father of one of America's leading mathematicians, Oswald Veblen of Princeton University. Several commentators saw Veblen's ethnic-Norwegian background and his relative "isolation from American society" in Minnesota as essential to the understanding of his writings. Harvard University sociologist David Riesman maintained that Veblen's background as a child of immigrants meant that Veblen was alienated from his parents' original culture, but that his "living in a Norwegian society within America" made him unable to "assimilate and accept the available forms of Americanism" completely. According to Stanford University historian George M. Fredrickson (1959), the "Norwegian society" that Veblen lived in (Minnesota) was so "isolated" that when he left it "he was, in a sense, emigrating to America."
Education At age 17, in 1874, Veblen was sent to attend nearby Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. Veblen's parents had him enrolled in hopes that he would become a Lutheran minister, but in later years he was dismissive of all "anthropomorphic cults" and identified as agnostic. Early in his schooling he demonstrated both the bitterness and the sense of humor that would characterize his later works. Veblen studied economics and philosophy under the guidance of the young John Bates Clark (1847–1938), who went on to become a leader in the new field of neoclassical economics. Clark influenced Veblen greatly, and as Clark initiated him into the formal study of economics, Veblen came to recognize the nature and limitations of hypothetical economics that would begin to shape his theories. Veblen later developed an interest in the social sciences, taking courses within the fields of philosophy, natural history, and classical philology. Within the realm of philosophy, the works of Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) were of greatest interest to him, inspiring several preconceptions of socio-economics. In contrast, his studies in natural history and classical philology shaped his formal use of the disciplines of science and language respectively. After Veblen graduated from Carleton in 1880, he traveled east to study philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. While at Johns Hopkins he studied under Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914). When he failed to obtain a scholarship there he moved on to Yale University, where he found economic support for his studies, obtaining a Doctor of Philosophy in 1884, with a major in philosophy and a minor in social studies. His dissertation was entitled Ethical Grounds of a Doctrine of Retribution. At Yale, he studied under renowned academics such as philosopher Noah Porter (1811–1892) and sociologist William Graham Sumner (1840–1910).
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