Anthem Companion to Thorstein Veblen

Sidney Plotkin is professor of political science and Margaret Stiles Halleck Chair of Social Sciences at Vassar College, USA. He received his PhD in political science from City University of New York. Plotkin has written extensively on issues of land use, political power and community action, resulting in numerous articles and two books, Keep Out: The Struggle for Land Use Control (1987) and Private Interest, Public Spending (1994). More recently, his attention has turned to the work of Thorstein Veblen, about whom he has published many articles, and, with Rick Tilman, The Political Ideas of Thorstein Veblen (2011). Plotkin has served as president of the International Thorstein Veblen Association.

The Anthem Companions to Sociology offers wide ranging and masterly overviews of the works of major sociologists. The volumes in the series provide authoritative and critical appraisals of key figures in modern social thought. These books, written and edited by leading figures, are essential additional reading on the history of sociology. — Gerard Delanty, Professor of Sociology, University of Sussex, Brighton

• Introduction: Thorstein Veblen’s Elusive Mind; Part I: Method, Philosophy and Values; 1. The Instinct of Workmanship and Other Philosophical Concepts in Thorstein Veblen’s Methodology; 2. Reconsidering Thorstein Veblen’s Use of Instincts; 3. Roman Catholic Critics of Thorstein Veblen and Institutional Economists; 4. The Metaphysical World of Thorstein Veblen: Of and Beyond the Here and Now; 5. Veblen’s Position on Education Analyzed and Reformulated; Part II: Capitalism, Social Structure and Politics; 6. Re-Igniting the Anthropology of Capitalism: Returning to Veblen, after postmodernism, after postcoloniality; 7. On the Social Origin of the Leisure Class in Turkey: For a Veblenian Turn in the Marxian Research Program of Turkish Studies; 8. Veblen’s Localism and its Ambiguities; 9. Learning from Veblen’s Masterless Man for Grassroots Democratic Change; Index.