A CENTENNIAL REASSESSMENT OF VEBLEN'S
THEORY OF CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION

©by Stephen Edgell

NOTES


1. All references to this text are from the 1970 edition published in London by Unwin Books.


2. The letters in question are from Veblen to Miss Hardy dated November 10, 1895 and December 15, 1895, and one to 'My Dear Friend' dated February 6, 1896. The continuity of the contents of these letters suggests, as Dorfman has correctly assumed (1934: 132), that Miss Hardy was also the recipient of the third letter. In the November letter Veblen wrote that: 'The first volume on the list is the Theory of the Leisure Class, and I have taken that up in a small way this month - I am putting in an hour or two a day on it ... I have written part of the introductory chapter, - what would make perhaps some twelve, fifteen small pages.' In the December letter Veblen reported on his progress: 'The Leisure Class was of course shelved while the December Journal took the floor ... after having written what will perhaps make some fifty or sixty pages when revised, I have not yet come in sight of the doctrine of conspicuous waste, which is of course to constitute the substantial nucleus of this writing.' In the February letter Veblen noted that: ' ... in the last three weeks the "Leisure Class" has been in abeyance, having achieved nothing beyond contributing some half dozen sheets of handwriting to the waste-basket.' All three letters form part of the Joseph Dorfman Papers, owned by Columbia University Library, New York.


3. In Fred. R. Yoder's course notes there several references to Boas including his research reports on the Kwakiutl Indians dated 1895-6. These notes also form part of the Joseph Dorfman Papers held in Columbia University Library.


4. See especially Tilman (1992: 215-6).


5. In the past three months there have been two press reports in Britain on the increasing popularity of 'Voluntary Simplicity'. The empirical reference point of the first item was America (Carlin 1996), in the second it was Britain (Tredre 1996), and both noted that it was a middle class pattern.


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RETURN TO: Correcting the history about Thorstein Bunde Veblen