David Riesman (redirected from Riesman)

Riesman, David 

Born Sept. 22, 1909, in Philadelphia. American sociologist.

Educated as a lawyer, Riesman was a professor at the University of Buffalo from 1937 to 1941, at the University of Chicago beginning in 1949, and at Harvard University beginning in 1958. He gained fame with his studies on social psychology and culture in the USA in the 20th century: The Lonely Crowd (1950) and Faces in the Crowd (1952). According to Riesman, the “inner-directed” man, an active participant in the competitive struggle of the age of free enterprise, becomes the “other-directed” man, totally subordinated to the bureaucratic organization. This evolution of man’s social character, according to Riesman, is manifested by apathy, pessimism, cynicism, and a sense of inner emptiness.

Riesman describes the crisis of American efficiency, the expansion of consumer psychology, and the increasing worship of the idols of consumption and entertainment. While sharply criticizing the state-monopoly bureaucracy, Riesman attempts to depict the processes taking place as universal, ostensibly associated with the complexities engendered by industrialization and urbanization. He fails to see that these processes are generated by the social and class structure of the USA and idealizes 19th-century American capitalism.

Riesman has written many works that criticize militarism and anticommunism from the standpoints of bourgeois democratism and abstract humanism.

WORKS

The Lonely Crowd. New York, 1950. (With N. Glazer and R. Denney.)
Faces in the Crowd. New Haven, Conn., 1952.
Thorstein Veblen. New York, 1953.
Individualism Reconsidered. Glencoe, III., 1954.
Constraint and Variety in American Education. [Lincoln, Neb., 1956.]
Abundance for What? Garden City, N.Y., 1963.
Conversations in Japan: Modernization, Politics and Culture. London, 1967.
The Academic Revolution. Garden City, N.Y., 1968. (With C. Jencks.)

REFERENCES

Andreeva, M. Sovremennaia burzhuaznaia empiricheskaia sotsiologiia. Moscow, 1965.
Zamoshkin, lu. A. Krizis burzhuaznogo individualizma i lichnost’. Moscow, 1966.

IU. A. ZAMOSHKIN