lonely crowd

[Dave Monroe]

David Riesman, Sociologist Whose 'Lonely Crowd' Became
a Best Seller, Dies at 92

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

--- lorentzen-nicklaus
<lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de> wrote:
> 
>  R.I.P. david riesman!

David Riesman, the sociologist whose 1950 scholarly
book, "The Lonely Crowd," unexpectedly tapped a deep
vein of self-criticism among Americans and became a
perennial best seller, contributing ideas and
descriptive phrases to popular culture, died yesterday
in Binghamton, N.Y. He was 92 and had lived for many
years in Cambridge, Mass. 

"The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American
Character," written with Reuel Denney and Nathan
Glazer, prompted millions of Americans to begin
characterizing their friends, neighbors and associates
as "other-directed," "inner-directed" or,
occasionally, "tradition-directed."

[...]

"The Lonely Crowd" was among the first of the postwar
classics written by academics who gained unanticipated
fame and fortune because an anxious public believed
that their works had uncovered some deteriorating and
alarming condition in American society. Other such
books include "The Greening of America," by Charles
Reich; "The Other America," by Michael Harrington;
"One-Dimensional Man," by Herbert Marcuse; "Life
Against Death," by Norman O. Brown; and "The Closing
of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed
Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's
Students," by Allan Bloom.

[...]

In "Individualism Reconsidered and Other Essays," he
wrote: "What is feared as failure in American society
is, above all, aloneness. And aloneness is terrifying
because it means there is no one, no group, no
approved cause, to submit to."

Professor Riesman urged Americans to find "the nerve
to be oneself when that self is not approved of by the
dominant ethic of a society."

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/11/obituaries/11RIES.html



> 


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience
http://launch.yahoo.com