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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Devout Observances.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Selective adaptation governs what?
(a) The display of wealth.
(b) The fashion from year to year.
(c) Who survives socially.
(d) Who works for whom.

2. What happens when people attain a certain level of consumption?
(a) They try to raise their children with less frivolous things.
(b) It is difficult to move to a lower level.
(c) It is easier to reach what has been just out of reach.
(d) They are free to move down, but it is difficult to move further up.

3. What happens to the standard of wealth over time?
(a) It keeps increasing as society becomes more efficient.
(b) It remains the same until technology increases efficiencies again.
(c) It declines as efficiencies make wealth easier to obtain.
(d) It changes as trends change.

4. How does Veblen explain the change of fashion from year to year?
(a) It is a shallow form of bourgeois emulation of different aristocratic idols.
(b) It is a form of cultural restlessness.
(c) It is a constantly renewed way to police who is current and who is classic.
(d) It is a form of conspicuous waste.

5. Which organization does Veblen cite as an example of an organization whose existence is related to devout observance?
(a) The Freemasons.
(b) The Chamber of Commerce.
(c) The Ku Klux Klan.
(d) Young Men's Christian Association.

Short Answer Questions

1. Which employments were associated with a lower status?

2. Why do people spend more than they need for physical comfort?

3. What did men use to display their exploits during the earliest forms of ownership?

4. What allowed a leisure class to emerge?

5. What does Veblen say that the leisure-class and lower-class delinquents have in common, along with their belief in an unseen hand?

(see the answer key)

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