ABSTRACT
It is widely known that, in The Theory of the Leisure Class, and indeed in all of his work, Thorstein Veblen employed an “anthropological approach” to his descriptions of modern economies. In this paper I will explore the meaning and consequences of these anthropological roots. Changes that were occurring in anthropology itself, even as Veblen was writing The Theory of the Leisure Class, have tended to obscure the multiple meanings that anthropology had for Veblen. The divergent paths of economic anthropology and of institutional economics in this century will also be explained.
