Veblen: The Making of an Economist Who Unmade Economics

Camic (coeditor, Social Knowledge in the Making), a sociology professor at Northwestern University, uncovers the intellectual roots of Thorstein Veblen’s economic theories in this detailed yet underwhelming biography. Raised on a Minnesota farm by Norwegian immigrants, Veblen (1857–1929) is frequently described as a social misfit whose outsider status gave him the vantage point he’d use to critique Gilded Age excesses and upend prevailing notions about labor, capital, and consumption in his 1899 The Theory of the Leisure Class. Camic persuasively disputes this portrayal, revealing Veblen as an academic insider educated and employed by some of America’s most elite universities, where his thinking was shaped by leading scholars of the day. Camic details the emergence of economics as an academic field in the late 19th century, and delves into the theories of economists John Bates Clark and James Laurence Laughlin, sociologist Herbert Spencer, historians Moses Coit Tyler and Herbert Tuttle, and other thinkers who influenced Veblen’s work. Yet in placing Veblen so firmly among his peers, Camic somewhat obscures his subject, offering little insight, for instance, into the sources of Veblen’s indifference to social conventions (his third extramarital affair got him fired from Stanford University). Readers not already well-versed in Veblen’s life and work won’t walk away from this with a very clear portrait of the man behind the theories. (Nov.)