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From the lonely crowd to the cultural contradictions of capitalism and beyond: The shifting ground of liberal narratives
Author(s) -
Galbo Joseph
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
journal of the history of the behavioral sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.216
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1520-6696
pISSN - 0022-5061
DOI - 10.1002/jhbs.10182
Subject(s) - capitalism , narrative , sociology , aesthetics , common ground , political economy , political science , environmental ethics , philosophy , art , politics , law , literature , communication
This paper investigates how key social issues related to American culture, social character, and politics areaddressed in the work of two of America's leading liberal sociologists, David Riesman and Daniel Bell. Itmaps out the trajectory of Riesman's and Bell's early contributions to a critique of mass society inpost‐war America, as well as Bell's later formulation of “liberalism in crisis” and hisassessment of culture in The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism . This analysis paysparticular attention to the intellectual, biographical, and social settings that helped to shape the oftenconflicting ideas of each thinker, and examines the discursive shifts within liberal thinking as it attempted toexplain and deal with perceived new social crises from the 1950s to the present. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals,Inc.