Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one. (Voltaire)
There is much chattering in Québec these days around the idea of a cultural crisis, an idea put forward in particular in a recent book by reasonable accommodation co-commissioner Gérard Bouchard and colleague. My take on it isn’t that clear, as usual I guess, but I’m mostly under the impression that much of this talk […]
Thorstein Veblen, who pioneered the institutionalist school in economics, published a short but classic book more than a century ago, entitled “The theory of the leisure class” (1899). That’s where he coined the expression “conspicuous consumption”, linking sociology and economics through the study of a type of behaviour, motivated not by direct hedonistic pleasure, which […]
