{"id":228,"date":"2014-01-28T09:03:05","date_gmt":"2014-01-28T09:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/?p=228"},"modified":"2017-06-08T04:25:03","modified_gmt":"2017-06-08T04:25:03","slug":"erik-s-reinert-francesca-lidia-viano-eds-thorstein-veblen-economics-for-an-age-of-crises-london-anthem-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/09-1\/c61-book-review\/erik-s-reinert-francesca-lidia-viano-eds-thorstein-veblen-economics-for-an-age-of-crises-london-anthem-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Erik S. Reinert & Francesca Lidia Viano (eds.), Thorstein Veblen. Economics for an Age of Crises (London: Anthem, 2012)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\t
\n\n\t\t<\/i><\/span> <\/a>\n\n\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Frequent yet allegedly unexpected crises, the sudden meltdowns of recently praised free-market \u2018tigers\u2019, and large-scale social unrest keep surfacing in the post-Thatcherite world of \u2018free-trade agreements\u2019, \u2018globalisation\u2019, \u2018deregulation\u2019, \u2018privatisation\u2019, monetary \u2018great moderation\u2019 and similar catchwords for the so-called age of \u2018neo-liberalism\u2019. Given such circumstances, a few mainstream economists have been willing to reconsider at least some of the premises upon which their discipline has operated and to rediscover the long-forgotten wisdom of a famous but largely uninfluential mind, whose contribution to the discipline\u2019s textbooks has been reduced to a class of odd goods that moneyed people want all the more the costlier they get (i.e. so-called \u2018Veblen goods\u2019).<\/p>\n

In this perspective, part four (of four) in Reinert\u2019s and Viano\u2019s book contains six exemplary chapters, penned by five seasoned academics and two outstanding young students, that focus upon the usefulness of Veblen\u2019s diverse and different categories of thought for today\u2019s economists, legislators and policy-makers.<\/p>\n

Geoffrey M. Hodgson\u2019s \u201cThorstein Veblen: The Father of Evolutionary and Institutional Economics\u201d compares mainstream economics\u2019 current usage of notions that were crucial for Veblen\u2014such as \u201cinstitutions\u201d and \u201cevolution\u201d (283)\u2014with Veblen\u2019s original understanding of them. His conclusion is that the former, corrupted by rational choice theory and a simplistic interpretation of Darwinism, has reduced these notions to \u201capologetic\u201d descriptors within a grossly distorted picture of \u201cmarket competition\u201d that pleases the adherents of \u201claissez faire\u201d economics (292). On the contrary, Veblen\u2019s understanding of them is much more nuanced, empirically perceptive, open to revision, and disciplinarily ecumenical. He therefore concludes: \u201cWe can still learn a great deal from his writings and build on them for the future.\u201d (292)<\/p>\n

Paul Burkander\u2019s \u201cVeblen\u2019s Words Weighed\u201d dissects the full complexity of meaning in a famously convoluted passage in Veblen\u2019s essay \u201cWhy is Economics is Not an Evolutionary Science\u201d, showing its author\u2019s commitment to replace \u201cneoclassical economics\u201d (297) with a novel approach that may truly \u201cscrutinise the economic actions of man\u201d (300).<\/p>\n

L. Randall Wray\u2019s \u201cThe Great Crash of 2007 Viewed through the Perspective of Veblen\u2019s Theory of Business Enterprise, Keynes\u2019s Monetary Theory of Production and Minsky\u2019s Financial Instability Hypothesis\u201d brings three heterodox classics into dialogue, highlighting mutual similarities and differences, so as to provide insights in the structural economic conditions that do actually cause financial crashes like the 2007 one.<\/p>\n

James K. Galbraith\u2019s \u201cPredation from Veblen until Now: Remarks to the Veblen Sesquicentennial Conference\u201d makes use of a largely neglected concept in Veblen\u2019s understanding of socio-economic phenomena, i.e. predation, in order to explain the historical origins and the well-tested beneficial functions of regulation within market economies. As he writes: \u201cA functioning structure of regulation is the instrument\u2026 of that part of the business community that wishes, and chooses, to play by a common set of rules\u201d that keep market economies from \u201cpredatory self-destruction.\u201d (327)<\/p>\n

Sophus A. Reinart\u2019s and Francesca Lidia Viano\u2019s \u201cCapitalising Expectations: Veblen on Consumption, Crises and the Utility of Waste\u201d addresses another economic notion, i.e. \u201cexpectations\u201d and how Veblen was capable of explaining its centrality in \u201csystemic financial collapses\u201d as well as \u201cpatterns of individual consumption.\u201d (329)<\/p>\n

Robert H. Frank\u2019s \u201cThorstein Veblen: Still Misunderstood, but More Important than Ever\u201d takes its moves from Veblen\u2019s enduring textbook relevance in the very specific field of positional goods. Then it proceeds to emphasising his relevance vis-\u00e0-vis the much more general claim that \u201cevaluations of all types depend heavily on social context\u201d, hence on the necessity for \u201ceconomic models\u201d to stop assuming \u201cthat consumption decisions take place in social isolation\u201d and start differentiating amongst the ways in which social factors affect economic evaluations and actual choices. (358)<\/p>\n

Elements of the fourth part of the book colour the third one, in which three more social scientists explore in as many chapters Veblen\u2019s importance for the field of politics.<\/p>\n

Sidney Plotkin\u2019s \u201cThorstein Veblen and the Politics of Predatory Power\u201d focuses upon Veblen\u2019s understanding of predation in human affairs and its applicability to phenomena such as social coercion, alienation, instrumental rationality, warfare and institutional development.<\/p>\n

Stephen Edgell\u2019s \u201cVeblen, War and Peace\u201d tries to fill a gap in the scholarly literature about Veblen, since the economists interested in his work are said to have largely neglected Veblen\u2019s studies on World War I and the ensuing peace agreements. By doing so, Edgell does not only offer an account of this lesser known component of Veblen\u2019s legacy, but also an application of Veblen\u2019s insights to the contemporary conflicts in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Ey\u00fcp \u00d6zveren\u2019s \u201cVeblen\u2019s \u2018Higher Learning\u2019: The Scientist as Sisyphus in the Iron Cage of a University\u201d approaches Veblen\u2019s research from the perspective of Veblen\u2019s assessment of the history of modern sciences, the development of academic institutions, and the failure of the latter to be truly beneficial to society at large. According to \u00d6zveren\u2019s \u201caccount, Veblen was highly sceptical of the universities\u2019 ability to produce skilled and constructive minds, because of enduring archaic habits of thought, ritual functions in costly displays of wealth and status, enslavement to short-term business goals, and the prevalence of institutional competition over institutional cooperation. Additionally, \u00d6zveren\u2019s account offers a depiction of academics as Sisyphus-like figures, who engage in the production of knowledge and fame that are bound to be overcome by the future academics that they nurture and instruct.<\/p>\n

Parts one and two of the book belong primarily to \u2018Veblenite\u2019 historiography, as they deal with Veblen\u2019s personal biography, his family and cultural background, his education in the US, and his own controversial teaching experiences. Of the six chapters comprised in these two parts, the readers of Nordicum-Mediterraneum are going to find the first four (i.e. part one of the book) of particular interest, for they focus upon Veblen\u2019s Norwegian and Scandinavian background, especially in the context of late-19th-century Nordic immigrant communities in North America. These four chapters being: K\u00e5re Lunden\u2019s \u201cExplaining Veblen by his Norwegian Background: A Sketch\u201d; Terje Mikael Hasle Joranger\u2019s \u201cValdres of the Upper Midwest: The Norwegian Background of the Veblen Family and their Migration to the United States\u201d; Knut Odner\u2019s \u201cNew Perspectives on Thorstein Veblen, the Norwegian\u201d; and Russell H. Bartley and Sylvia Erickson Bartley\u2019s \u201cThe Physical World of Thorstein Veblen: Washington Island and Other Intimate Spaces\u201d.<\/p>\n

The book hereby reviewed is the result of the conference held in Valdres, Norway, upon the 150th anniversary of Veblen\u2019s birth. It contains essays that differ considerably in length, topic, methodology, and reader-friendliness. Most of them presuppose a modicum of familiarity with Veblen\u2019s work. Therefore, this volume cannot be recommended as an introduction to it. Rather, taken together, the book\u2019s essays offer a very interesting token of Veblen scholarship and an eloquent exemplification of the cross-disciplinary appeal of Veblen\u2019s genius. Furthermore, the essays comprised in the first part of the book reflect extensively upon the Nordic elements in Veblen\u2019s life experience and intellectual interests, and should appeal to our journal\u2019s Scandinavian readership, particularly in Norway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cConsidering the inability of conventional economics to comprehend the socio-economic convulsions over the past few years in so many countries, it is surely time to try something else.\u201d Thus reads Samuel Hollander\u2019s blurb on the back cover of another recent book devoted to the great belle-\u00e9poque iconoclast of Western economics, Norwegian-American Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929; David Reisman, The Social Economics of Thorstein Veblen, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2012).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":254,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[221,139,646,679],"coauthors":[990],"class_list":["post-228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c61-book-review","tag-economics","tag-migration","tag-norway","tag-veblen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1766,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228\/revisions\/1766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}