abstract:Conspicuous leisure is a term introduced by the American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen, in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). The term denotes visible leisure for the sake of displaying social status.
Economist and social critic Thorstein Veblen took a crack at it in The Theory of the Leisure Class, the 1899 classic that wryly posited the theory of "conspicuous consumption, " his phrase for keeping up with the Joneses.