View a FREE sample

This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What employments did upper-class people in Iceland and Polynesia work in?
(a) Government, military, and the ministry.
(b) Management, service jobs, and newspapers.
(c) Arts, music, and entertainment.
(d) Investment banking and diplomacy.

2. What distinction does Veblen say separates men and women?
(a) Women are more empathetic.
(b) Women can contain men's emotions.
(c) Men can endure greater strains.
(d) Men are more aggressive.

3. What does Veblen say public lawns have?
(a) Pecuniary beauty.
(b) More aesthetic beauty than pastures.
(c) Emulation of pastures.
(d) Lower maintenance than pastures.

4. What are signs of vicarious consumption?
(a) Open air markets for servants.
(b) Making loans to workers.
(c) Costume and dress of servants.
(d) Volunteering among the poor.

5. How does Veblen say the laboring classes in an agricultural society see work?
(a) It is not undignified.
(b) It is the means to advancement.
(c) It is humiliating.
(d) It is the minimum requirement.

6. What does Veblen say happens as technology progresses?
(a) Men have more children.
(b) Men have more time for prayer.
(c) Men have more wives.
(d) Men have more time for activities beyond subsistence.

7. What consumption articles does Veblen state that the consumer hangs on to the most?
(a) Objects with high exchange value.
(b) Necessities.
(c) Luxuries.
(d) Objects with high utility value.

8. What does Veblen say emulation leads to?
(a) Conspicuous consumption.
(b) Conspicuous produciton.
(c) Conspicuous servitude.
(d) Conspicuous waste.

9. What incentive does Veblen say results from the desire to own property?
(a) The incentive to marry.
(b) The incentive to fight over property.
(c) The incentive to work.
(d) The incentive to have children.

10. Which aspect of culture was a condition for the development of a leisure class?
(a) Competition for resources.
(b) A predatory nature in the community.
(c) An ethic of sharing.
(d) Representative government.

11. What distinction begins to be drawn as the group around the patron grows?
(a) Between noble and ignoble.
(b) Between landed and monied gentry.
(c) Between aristocratic and democratic.
(d) Between upper-class and lower-class merchants.

12. Vicarious consumption reflects whose standing?
(a) The slave's.
(b) The patron's.
(c) The servant's.
(d) The worker's.

13. What does Veblen say is evidence of people's concern with their appearances?
(a) They will expose as much or as little of themselves as fashion warrants.
(b) They will neglect to protect themselves from the weather.
(c) They will wear clothing that gets in the way of their work.
(d) They will follow the fashions, no matter how silly.

14. What do expensive handmade clothes have that cheap imitations do not?
(a) The signature of the maker.
(b) More authentic components.
(c) The aesthetic quality of the original.
(d) Patented features.

15. How does the upper class distinguish itself, according to Veblen?
(a) By selling the proceeds of its labor.
(b) By performing labor efficiently.
(c) By profiting from labor.
(d) By avoiding labor.

Short Answer Questions

1. What was the state of the leisure class in hunting cultures?

2. What are the standards of consumption determined by?

3. How do standards of consumption change?

4. What gives an item its desirability to men of the leisure class?

5. What does Veblen say happens to those who can afford not to work?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 559 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample