Thorstein Veblen’s‘anthropological’approach tofin de sièclematerial
culture provides a useful complement to recent research by anthropolo-
gists and cognitive scientists, partly because of his acute observation of
North American middle classmores, and partly because of his preoccu-
pation with making things. It is useful even now because his reflections
did not make the actors of the past less intelligent or less adept than they
actually were. He nevertheless recognized that past societies were driven
by semi-rational, often not fully articulated assumptions. Veblen moves
with ease between the recent and the remote past, making connections
that show how strong the attractions are of collective behaviour and how
these collective forms reproduce hierarchical structures with social
leaders setting the tone for the rest of society. There is a further reason
for looking to Veblen that does not emerge directly from the scope of his
reflections. His subject matter ranges freely in different historical settings
but refrains from commenting on classical antiquity. His ideas are
therefore free from the kinds of assumptions about cultural dominance
that have played such a conspicuous part in evaluations of‘peripheral’
European societies since the early nineteenth century if not earlier, and
that have unconsciously continued to influence more recent paradigms
of inter-cultural contacts. Michael Dietler has referred these tendencies
as‘entangled ancient and modern colonialisms’.^41
Veblen’s analysis of conspicuous consumption begins with a reflection
on manners.‘Manners, we are told, are in part an elaboration of gesture,
and in part they are symbolical and conventionalized survivals repre-
senting former acts of dominance or of personal service or of personal
contact. In large part they are an expression of the relation of status—a
sublime pantomime of mastery on the one hand and subservience on the
other.’^42 Here Veblen has encapsulated with considerable acuity the
pattern of interpersonal dependence within hierarchical social groups
and the behavioural traits associated with such formal relations. The
context of his reflections, thefinal decades of the nineteenth century,
coincided with the wealthyfictional North American dynasties of Henry
James and the lastflourish of the Victorian and Edwardian country
house in the Anglo-Saxon world of northern Europe. Veblen’s sensibility
to the atmosphere of wealthy families and their dependants is one that
few writers share today. He winds the clock of time backwards to an
indistinct era when people could be owned just likefixed and movable
material property.‘Women and other slaves are highly valued, both as an
evidence of wealth and as a means of accumulating wealth. Together with
(^41) Dietler 2009, 13–35; cf. Dietler 2011. (^42) Veblen 1899 [2007], 35–6.
158 Thelongue duréein the north Aegean