Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; List of Contributors; 1. Introduction - Erik S. Reinert and Francesca Lidia Viano; 2. Veblen's Contexts: Valdres, Norway and Europe; Filiations of Economics; and Economics for an Age of Crises - Erik S. Reinert; PART ONE: NORWEGIAN ORIGINS AND PERSONAL LIFE: 3. Explaining Veblen by his Norwegian Background: A Sketch - Kare Lunden; 4. Valdres to the Upper Midwest: The Norwegian Background of the Veblen Family and their Migration to the United States - Terje Mikael Hasle Joranger; 5. New Perspectives on Thorstein Veblen, the Norwegian - Knut Odner; 6. The Physical World of Thorstein Veblen: Washington Island and Other Intimate Spaces - Russell H. Bartley and Sylvia Erickson Bartley; PART TWO: AMERICAN EDUCATION: 7. Ithaca Transfer: Veblen and the Historical Profession - Francesca Lidia Viano; 8. Schooling for Heterodoxy: On the Foundations of Thorstein Veblen's Institutional Economics - Charles Camic; PART THREE: VEBLEN'S POLITICS: 9. Thorstein Veblen and the Politics of Predatory Power - Sidney Plotkin; 10. Veblen, War and Peace - Stephen Edgell; 11. Veblen's 'Higher Learning': The Scientist as Sisyphus in the Iron Cage of a University - Eyup Ozveren; PART FOUR: VEBLEN'S ECONOMICS: 12. Thorstein Veblen: The Father of Evolutionary and Institutional Economics - Geoffrey M. Hodgson; 13. Veblen's Words Weighed - Paul Burkander; 14. The Great Crash of 2007 Viewed through the Perspective of Veblen's 'Theory of Business Enterprise', Keynes's Monetary Theory of Production and Minsky's Financial Instability Hypothesis - L. Randall Wray; 15. Predation from Veblen until Now: Remarks to the Veblen Sesquicentennial Conference - James K. Galbraith; 16. Capitalising Expectations: Veblen on Consumption, Crises and the Utility of Waste - Sophus A. Reinert and Francesca Lidia Viano; 17. Thorstein Veblen: Still Misunderstood, but More Important Now than Ever - Robert H. Frank; Name Index; Subject Index

Promotional Information

Presents state-of-the-art scholarship on Thorstein Veblen, one of the world's most influential social scientists.

About the Author

Erik S. Reinert is President of The Other Canon Foundation, Norway, and Professor of Technology and Development Strategies at Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia. Francesca Lidia Viano is a Graduate Research Associate at the Center for History and Economics at Harvard University.

Reviews

'[T]he book's essays offer a very interesting token of Veblen scholarship and an eloquent exemplification of the cross-disciplinary appeal of Veblen's genius' -Giorgio Baruchello, 'Nordicum-Mediterraneum' '[O]ne of the best sources available to the reader who wants to cope with modern Veblenian scholarship. There are nearly all of the recent achievements in it.' -Marco Cavalieri, 'History of Economic Ideas'