Brent has a Ph.D. in American culture, specializing in .lm studies, from the University of Michigan. She is a freelance writer and teaches courses in the history of American cinema. In the following essay, Brent discusses Galbraith's place in the history of economic theory.

To appreciate the significance of The Affluent Society to economic theory, it is useful to place the work of Galbraith within the broader history of economics as a field of inquiry. Galbraith is associated with the American Institutionalist school of economic theory, which arose in the early twentieth century. Below is a brief overview of the history of economic theory, beginning in the late-eighteenth century, and a brief discussion of Galbraith's influence on the conventional wisdom of attitudes about the role of the economist in American society and culture.

The first stage in the history of economic theory has come to be...