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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. When does Veblen say that a leisure class emerged?
(a) During the transition from mercantilism to early industry.
(b) During the transition from agricultural barbarism to urban mercantilism.
(c) During the transition from primitive savagery to barbarism.
(d) During the transition from savage barbarism to agricultural barbarism.

2. What stage of culture contained the institution of the leisure class?
(a) Late stages of agricultural culture.
(b) Early stages of agricultural culture.
(c) High stages of barbarian culture.
(d) Late stages of hunting culture.

3. What does Veblen say was the earliest form of ownership?
(a) Ownership of land.
(b) Ownership of songs.
(c) Ownership of women.
(d) Ownership of hunting rights.

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

5. What does Veblen say the effects of an ownership society are on the behavior of its members?
(a) It makes people frugal.
(b) It makes people warlike.
(c) It makes people conservative.
(d) It makes people economically insecure.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Veblen say wealth is obtained?

2. What distinction does Veblen say emerged between types of labor in cultures that had a leisure class?

3. What does Veblen say is evidence of people's concern with their appearances?

4. What do expensive handmade clothes have that cheap imitations do not?

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

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Veblen describe the differences between the sexes and the effect of those differences on economic life of a society?

2. What are the two conditions necessary for the development of the leisure class?

3. How have women's clothes demonstrated that the woman does not engage in productive employment?

4. How does the standard of wealth change over time?

5. How are the different social classes distinguished?

6. What distinguishes the leisure class from the other classes?

7. What do a man's possessions say about the man?

8. How did women practice production and consumption in early predatory culture?

9. How are habits formed?

10. How does the labor class view its work?

(see the answer keys)

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