From the lonely crowd to the cultural contradictions of capitalism and beyond: The shifting ground of liberal narratives
✍ Scribed by Joseph Galbo
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2004
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 172 KB
- Volume
- 40
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0022-5061
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Abstract
This paper investigates how key social issues related to American culture, social character, and politics are
addressed in the work of two of America's leading liberal sociologists, David Riesman and Daniel Bell. It
maps out the trajectory of Riesman's and Bell's early contributions to a critique of mass society in
post‐war America, as well as Bell's later formulation of “liberalism in crisis” and his
assessment of culture in The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. This analysis pays
particular attention to the intellectual, biographical, and social settings that helped to shape the often
conflicting ideas of each thinker, and examines the discursive shifts within liberal thinking as it attempted to
explain and deal with perceived new social crises from the 1950s to the present. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals,
Inc.