Word: veblen
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...every ex-schoolboy has probably forgotten, Thorstein Veblen coined the phrase "conspicuous consumption" after examining the untaxed sachems of the Gilded Age, their mansions, yachts, gargantuan dinner parties and cyclopean stickpins. In The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) Veblen did not hide his disdain for such display. He belonged to an era of sociology before it married computer science, bred statistics and headed for the neutral horizons of market research...
...WORST "fashion statement' is the plaid skirt, which asserts the wearer's class superiority and gender inferiority. Preppie culture has always been patriarchal. Thorstein Veblen, who coined the phrase "conspicuous consumption" at the turn of the century, contended that the leisure class woman's function was to display-her male keeper's wealth. "The high heel, the skirt...and the general disregard of the wearer's comfort which is an obvious feature of all civilized women's apparel" suggested to Veblen that "the woman is still in theory the economic dependent of the man." Despite changes since Veblen...