Daniel Bell - Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Daniel Bell

Born May 10, 1919New York City, New York, UnitedStates

Died January 25, 2011 (aged 91)Cambridge, Massachusetts, UnitedStates

Fields Sociology

Institutions University of Chicago, ColumbiaUniversity, Harvard University

Alma mater City College of New YorkColumbia University

Doctoralstudents

Mustafa Emirbayer

Known for Post-industrialism

Influenced Charles Taylor

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Daniel Bell (May 10, 1919 – January 25, 2011)[1] was anAmerican sociologist, writer, editor, and professor emeritus atHarvard University, best known for his contributions to thestudy of post-industrialism. He has been described as "one of

the leading American intellectuals of the postwar era."[2] Histhree best known works are The End of Ideology, TheComing of Post-Industrial Society and The Cultural

Contradictions of Capitalism.[3]

1 Biography

1.1 Early life

1.2 Education

1.3 Career

2 Scholarship

2.1 The End of Ideology

2.2 The Coming of Post-Industrial Society

2.3 The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism

3 Personal life

4 Selected bibliography

5 References

6 Further reading

7 External links

Early life

Daniel Bell was born in 1919 in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. His parents, Benjamin

and Anna Bolotsky, were Jewish[4][5] immigrants originally from Eastern Europe. They worked in the garment

industry.[6] His father died when he was eight months old, and he grew up poor[7] living with relatives along

with his mother and his older brother.[8] When he was 13 years old, the family's name was changed from

Bolotsky to Bell.[6]

Education

Daniel Bell - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Bell

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Bell graduated from Stuyvesant High School and City College of New York with a bachelor's degree in science

and social science in 1938, and studied for one year further at Columbia University (1938–1939).[2][8] He spentmost of the next twenty years as a journalist, but ultimately earned a Ph.D. from Columbia in 1960 'even though

Bell had never written a doctoral dissertation. [9] According to Universal Microfilm International, Bell wrote adissertation entitled "The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties" for a Ph.D. inSociology from Columbia University. In 1960, it was published in hardcover.

Career

Bell began his professional life as a journalist, being managing editor of The New Leader magazine(1941–1945), labor editor of Fortune (1948–1958) and later co-editor (with his college friend Irving Kristol) ofThe Public Interest magazine (1965–1973). In the late 1940s Bell was Instructor in the Social Sciences in theCollege of the University of Chicago. In 1960, Columbia awarded him a Ph.D.; in lieu of a dissertation Bellsubmitted "The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties," the title of his first book.Subsequently he taught sociology, first at Columbia (1959–1969) and then at Harvard until his retirement in

1990.[10] He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1964.[11]

Bell also was the visiting Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at Cambridge University in 1987.He served as a member of the President’s Commission on Technology in 1964–1965 and as a member of thePresident’s Commission on a National Agenda for the 1980s in 1979.

Bell received honorary degrees from Harvard, the University of Chicago, fourteen other universities in theUnited States, Edinburgh Napier University, and Keio University in Japan. He also received a LifetimeAchievement Award from the American Sociological Association in 1992, and the Talcott Parsons Prize for theSocial Sciences from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1993. He was given the TocquevilleAward by the French government in 1995.

Bell was a director of Suntory Foundation and a scholar in residence of the American Academy of Arts andSciences.

Bell once described himself as a "socialist in economics, a liberal in politics, and a conservative in culture."[12]

Bell is best known for his contributions to post-industrialism. His most influential books are The End of

Ideology (1960), The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976) [13] and The Coming of Post-Industrial

Society (1973).[14] Two of his books, the End of Ideology and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism werelisted by the Times Literary Supplement as among the 100 most important books in the second half of thetwentieth century. Besides Bell only Isaiah Berlin, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Albert Camus, George Orwell and

Hannah Arendt, had two books so listed.[15]

The End of Ideology

Main article: The End of Ideology

In The End of Ideology, Bell suggests that the older grand humanistic ideologies derived from the nineteenthand early twentieth centuries are exhausted, and that new more parochial ideologies will soon arise.


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The Coming of Post-Industrial Society

In The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting, Bell outlined a new kind of society -the post-industrial society. He argued that post-industrialism would be information-led and service-oriented.Bell also argued that the post-industrial society would replace the industrial society as the dominant system.There are three components to a post-industrial society, according to Bell:

a shift from manufacturing to services

the centrality of the new science-based industries

the rise of new technical elites and the advent of a new principle of stratification.

Bell also conceptually differentiates between three aspects of the post-industrial society: data, or informationdescribing the empirical world, information, or the organization of that data into meaningful systems andpatterns such as statistical analysis, and knowledge, which Bell conceptualizes as the use of information tomake judgments. Bell discussed the manuscript of The Coming of Post-Industrial Society with Talcott Parsonsbefore its publication.

The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism

In The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, Bell contends that the developments of 20th century capitalismhave led to a contradiction between the cultural sphere of consumerist instant self-gratification and the demand,

in the economic sphere, for hard-working, productive individuals.[16] Bell articulates this through his "threerealms" methodology, which divides modern society into the cultural, economic and political spheres. Bell'sconcern is that with the growth of the welfare state throughout the post-war years, the population is beginning todemand the state fulfill the hedonistic desires that the cultural sphere is encouraging. This dovetails with theongoing requirement that the state maintain the kind of strong economic environment conducive to continualgrowth. For Bell, these competing, contradictory demands place excessive strain on the state that were manifest

in the economic turbulence, fiscal pressure and political upheaval characteristic of the 1970s.[17]

Bell's son, David Bell,[18] is a professor of French history at Princeton University, and his daughter, Jordy Bell,was an academic administrator and teacher of, among other things, U.S. Women's history at Marymount

College, Tarrytown, New York, before her retirement in 2005.[19]

Bell lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife Pearl Bell, a scholar of literary criticism. He died at home

on January 25, 2011.[6][20]

The New American Right (1955)

The End of Ideology (1960)

The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting, Daniel Bell. New York: Basic

Books, 1973, ISBN 0-465-01281-7

The Revolution of Rising Entitlement (1975)


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The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976)

^ Daniel Bell, Harvard U. Sociologist, Is Dead at 91 (http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/daniel-bell-harvard-

u-sociologist-is-dead-at-91/30019), The Chronicle of Higher Education], January 26, 2011

1.

^ a b Durham Peters, John, and Simonson, Peter (eds.) Mass communication and American social thought: key texts,

1919-1968 (http://books.google.com/books?id=34kSkJuYCIYC&pg=PA364), p.364-65 (2004) (ISBN

978-0742528390)

2.

^ Ahead of the curve (http://www.economist.com/node/18061086?story_id=18061086), Schumpeter, The Economist,

Feb 3rd 2011

3.

^ Paul Buhle (26 January 2011). "Daniel Bell obituary" (http://www.theguardian.com/education/2011/jan/26/daniel-

bell-obituary). The Guardian. Retrieved 19 September 2013.

4.

^ Joseph Dorman (February 11, 2011). "Daniel Bell, 91, a Leading American Intellectual Who Eschewed Simplistic

Labels" (http://forward.com/articles/135142/daniel-bell--a-leading-american-intellectual-who/). The Jewish Daily

Forward. Retrieved 19 September 2013.

5.

^ a b c Kaufman, Michael T. (26 January 2011). Daniel Bell, Ardent Appraiser of Politics, Economics and Culture,

Dies at 91 (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/arts/26bell.html), The New York Times

6.

^ "Ahead of the curve" (http://www.economist.com/node/18061086?story_id=18061086). The Economist. 3 February

2011. Retrieved 3 September 2012.

7.

^ a b Waters, Malcolm. Key Sociologists: Daniel Bell (http://books.google.com/books?id=7GMOXh3QB9gC&

pg=PA13), p. 13-16 (Routledge 1996) (ISBN 978-0415105774)

8.

^ Allitt, Patrick, The Conservative Tradition. Part 3 of 3. p. 40 (The Teaching Company 2009) (ISBN 1-59803-550-9)9.

^ Jumonville, Neil, ed. The New York intellectuals reader (http://books.google.com/books?id=FXT1LZBamAgC&

pg=PT209&dq=%22daniel+bell%22+1919&hl=en&ei=NzmvTIT2LsLflgeZmNjoDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&

ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22daniel%20bell%22%201919&f=false), Ch.17

(2007) (ISBN 978-0415952651)

10.

^ "Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter B" (http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterB.pdf).

American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved May 30, 2011.

11.

^ Gardner, Martin. The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener (http://books.google.com/books?id=-gUUJ-IXf3UC&

pg=PA4273&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22socialist%20in%20economics%22%20bell&f=false), p.

427 (1999 paperback ed.)

12.

^ Williams, Raymond. How can we sell the Protestant ethic at a psychedelic bazaar?: The Cultural Contradictions Of

Capitalism (book review (http://select.nytimes.com

/gst/abstract.html?res=F10B17F83D5B177B8EDDA80894DA405B868BF1D3), The New York Times, February 1,

1976

13.

^ Waters, Malcolm. Daniel Bell (http://books.google.com/books?id=qQje-4qnAT4C&pg=PA154&

dq=%22daniel+bell%22+1919&hl=en&ei=zDyvTMblEcL38AbR4tmiCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&

resnum=1&ved=0CCsQ6AEwADgK#v=onepage&q=%22daniel%20bell%22%201919&f=false), in The Blackwell

companion to major contemporary social theorists (Ritzer, George, ed.) (2003) (ISBN 978-1405105958)(Waters

identifies these as the "three works that made Bell famous")

14.


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Wikiquote has a collectionof quotations related to:Daniel Bell

^ The hundred most influential books since the war (http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk

/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article5418361.ece), Times Literary Supplement, December 30, 2008

15.

^ Liu, Eric. How Boomers Left Us With an Ethical Deficit (http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/09

/how-boomers-left-us-with-an-ethical-deficit/63478/), The Atlantic, September 24, 2010 ("When Daniel Bell wrote of

the cultural contradictions of capitalism -- that a self-denying work ethic leads to the affluence that gives rise to

self-gratifying play ethic that ends up corroding the affluence - he could also have described the life cycle of the

Boomers.")

16.

^ Gilbert, Andrew (October 2013). "The culture crunch: Daniel Bell’s The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism"

(http://the.sagepub.com/content/118/1/83.abstract). Thesis Eleven 118: 83–95. doi:10.1177/0725513613500383

(http://dx.doi.org/10.1177%2F0725513613500383). Retrieved 5/12/13.

17.

^ WEDDINGS; Donna Farber, David A. Bell (http://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/24/style/weddings-donna-farber-

david-a-bell.html), The New York Times, May 24, 1993

18.

^ Alumni (http://books.google.com/books?id=gBztAAAAMAAJ&q=%22jordy+bell%22+marymount&

dq=%22jordy+bell%22+marymount&hl=en&ei=LEGvTLjKL8H98AbHyvmqCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&

ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CDsQ6AEwBA), The University of Chicago Magazine, Vol. 93, p.41 (2000) (noting that

Jordy Bell is associate academic dean at Marymount)

19.

^ (26 January 2011). Daniel Bell, influential sociologist, dies at 91 (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article

/ALeqM5gKoNTgpnUhpQrH_ZIR6XryQ6wFgA?docId=b0f58ba74cca4671b568054c8387079d), Associated Press

20.

Brick, Howard (1986). Daniel Bell and the decline of intellectual radicalism : social theory and political

reconciliation in the 1940s. Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0-299-10550-4.

Liebowitz, Nathan (1985). Daniel Bell and the agony of modern liberalism. Westport, Conn: Greenwood

Press. ISBN 0-313-24279-8.

Bell's The End of Ideology chapter 13

(http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/bell-chap13.html)

bell&st=cse&scp=1 Daniel Bell, Master Builder. SAM

TANENHAUS. NYTimes. February 3, 2011. (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/books/review

/Tanenhaus-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&sq=daniel)

Arguing the World (http://www.pbs.org/arguing/), 1998 PBS documentary film featuring Nathan Glazer,

Irving Howe, Irving Kristol, and Bell

Speech by Daniel Bell on March 22, 1968, discussing the new character of American life.

(http://purl.lib.ua.edu/82833) From the University of Alabama's Emphasis Symposium on Contemporary

Issues.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Daniel_Bell&oldid=617341071"


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Categories: 1919 births 2011 deaths Academics of the University of Cambridge American sociologists

City College of New York alumni Columbia University alumni Columbia University faculty

Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Harvard University faculty

University of Chicago faculty Guggenheim Fellows American Jews Jewish American writers

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Daniel Bell - Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

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