O consumo como investimento: a teoria do capital humano e o capital humano como ethos

Osvaldo Javier López-Ruiz

doi:10.5433/2176-6665.2009v14n2p217

Authors

Osvaldo Javier López-Ruiz Universidade Estadual de Campinas - UNICAMP https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9685-3512

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5433/2176-6665.2009v14n2p217

Keywords:

Social values, Human Capital Theory, Max Weber, Michel Foucault

Abstract

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”.

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Author Biography

Osvaldo Javier López-Ruiz, Universidade Estadual de Campinas - UNICAMP

Doctor in Social Sciences from the State University of Campinas - UNICAMP.

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