Consumption as investment: the theory of human capital and human capital as ethos

• Autor(a) principal: López-Ruiz, Osvaldo Javier
• Data de Publicação: 2009
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Mediações - Revista de Ciências Sociais
• Texto Completo: https://ojs.uel.br/revistas/uel/index.php/mediacoes/article/view/4515
• topic: Social values; Human Capital Theory; Max Weber; Michel Foucault; Valores sociais; Teoria do capital humano; Max Weber; Michel Foucault

This paper discusses the dilution of the conceptual border between “consumption” and “investment.” We argue that it is a key element for the understanding of capitalism in its current stage and the values guiding contemporary society. Some concepts created by Human Capital Theory – an economic theory from the 1960s – are widely viewed today as values that guide the behavior of individuals. This yields to a conceptual–axiological shift from consumption to investment that allows unusual forms of “delaying satisfaction by consuming now.” The diffuse area that is created between “consumption” and “investment” helps to understand how the Protestant work ethic is recreated as an “ethic of entrepreneurial work,” that is, of work understood in terms of “individual enterprise”.