View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What, in Veblen's description, does education accomplish?

2. How does Veblen describe the industrial classes' relationship with sports?

3. What promotes the predatory aptitudes and predatory animus?

4. Which stage of culture does the antepredatory variant correlate to?

5. Natural selection of social structure is influenced by the natural selection of what?

Short Essay Questions

1. How are leisure-class women like members of the clergy?

2. What are the effects of devout observances?

3. How do men and women of the industrial classes feel and react to pecuniary pressures?

4. How do institutions change?

5. Where does Veblen believe the desire to gamble originates?

6. How are organizations organized around devout observances?

7. Which classes duel? Which classes fight?

8. What temperament does Veblen say characterizes the leisure class, and how does the leisure class change?

9. How does education form the leisure class?

10. How do sports relate to the fighting spirit?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Is Veblen critical of the leisure class, or is his work simply descriptive of their habits? Use the text and any social, biographical, or cultural research to define Veblen's feelings about the leisure class.

Essay Topic 2

How useful is the term "the leisure class"? Does it describe everyone with any disposable income? Is it really a synonym for the upper class? Is it a synonym for the middle class?

Essay Topic 3

Describe the role Darwinian thinking plays in "The Theory of the Leisure Class." Is Veblen simply applying Darwin's ideas to society, or is he using Darwin's ideas as tools to show things Darwin's theories would not have described?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 786 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample