David Riesman - Biography

David Riesman (born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, September 22, 1909; died in Binghamton, New York, May 10, 2002), was a sociologist, attorney, and educator.

After graduating from Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Harvard Law Review, Riesman clerked for Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis from 1935-1936. He also taught at the University of Buffalo Law School.

The Lonely Crowd

Riesman's 1950 book, The Lonely Crowd, a sociological study of modern conformity, which postulates the existence of the "inner-directed" and "other-directed" personalities. Riesman argues that the character of post-WWII 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. This lifestyle has a coercive effect, which compels people to abandon "inner-direction" of their lives, and induces them to take on the goals, ideology, likes, and dislikes of their community. Ironically, this creates a tightly grouped crowd of people that is yet incapable of truly fulfilling each other's desire for companionship. The book is considered a landmark study of American character. Riesman was a major public intellectual as well as a sociologist, representing an early example of what sociologists now call "public sociology."

American higher education

In addition to his many other publications, Riesman was also a noted commentator on American higher education, publishing, with his seminal work, The Academic Revolution co-written with Christopher Jencks. In The Academic Revolution Riesman sums up his position by stating, "If this book has any single message it is that the academic profession increasingly determines the character of undergraduate education in America." In a painstaking and historically thorough treatment of landmark changes in 20th-century American higher education, Riesman repeatedly highlights the effects of the "logic of the research university", which focuses upon strict disciplinary research. This internal logic both sets the goals of the research university and produces its future professors. Riesman noted this isolated any patterns of resistance that might challenge the university's primary purpose as disciplinary research, dashing their chances of success.

Further reading

• Galbo, Joseph. "From the lonely crowd to the cultural contradictions of capitalism and beyond: The shifting ground of liberal narratives," Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, Winter 2004, Vol. 40 Issue 1, pp 47-76