David Riesman
| David Riesman | |
|---|---|
| Born |
September 22, 1909 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States |
| Died | May 10, 2002 (aged 92) Binghamton, New York, United States |
| Alma mater | Harvard College, Harvard Law School |
| Occupation | Sociologist |
| Known for | The Lonely Crowd |
| Parent(s) | David Riesman |
David Riesman (September 22, 1909 – May 10, 2002) was a sociologist, educator, and best-selling commentator on American society.
Born to a wealthy German Jewish family, he attended Harvard College, where he graduated in 1931 with a degree in biochemistry. He attended Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Harvard Law Review. Riesman clerked for Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis between 1935 and 1936. He also taught at the University of Buffalo Law School and at the University of Chicago.
He worked for Sperry Gyroscope company during the war. After a fellowship at Yale to write the Lonely Crowd, he returned to Chicago. In 1958, he became a university professor at Harvard. Intellectually he was influenced most by Erich Fromm, as well as Carl Friedrich, Hannah Arendt, Leo Löwenthal, Robert K. Merton, Paul Lazarsfeld, Paul Goodman, Martha Wolfenstein, and Nathan Leites. He read widely in Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud.
Horowitz says The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character, in 1950
The book is largely a study of modern conformity, which postulates the existence of the "inner-directed" and "other-directed" personalities. Riesman argues that the character of post-World War II American society impels individuals to "other-directedness," the preeminent example being modern suburbia, where individuals seek their neighbors' approval and fear being outcast from their community. That lifestyle has a coercive effect, which compels people to abandon "inner-direction" of their lives, and it induces them to take on the goals, ideology, likes, and dislikes of their community.
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