Book Review: Keith B. Kerr, B. Garrick Harden, and Marcus Aldredge (ed.), David Riesman’s Unpublished Writings and Continuing Legacy

Abstract

Book Review: Keith B. Kerr, B. Garrick Harden, and Marcus Aldredge (ed.), David Riesman's Writings and Continuing Legacy. Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing, 2015. ISBN: 978-1-472-42848-6 (Paperback). 293 Pages. $97.60.[Article copies available for a fee from The Transformative Studies Institute. E-mail address: journal@transformativestudies.org Website: http://www.transformativestudies.org ©2017 by The Transformative Studies Institute. All rights reserved.]With a little effort, one could imagine the Institute for Social Research at the Goethe University Frankfurt establishing a school in the US, at some point in the early 1950s, at which David would have played a significant role. This imaginary school, perhaps a sibling of The New School for Social Research, would include some teachers and researchers who were not as clearly connected to Hegelian and Marxist philosophy as those from the German school. During the intense decades of the Cold War, members like would tread gently around such controversies as the grand stand-off between socialism and capitalism, at least as much as they could, and would-perhaps for that reason-never be distinguished as one of the school's most serious theorists. Michael Maccoby was right to point out in the collection here under review that Riesman characteristically exchanged theory for thick description (186).Nonetheless, Riesman's work is a major contribution in the trajectories coming out of post-World War II critical theory, and his most famous and influential book, The Lonely Crowd (1950), should always accompany Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944) as the more US-centric social-psychological study of American society and culture. With the German critical theorists, shared a deep interdisciplinary interest in sociology, psychoanalysis, political-economy, and philosophy, although his research ultimately owes more to Freud and Fromm than to Hegel and Marx.David (1909 - 2002) was a sociologist, Harvard University professor, and influential writer. Before that, he attended Harvard Law School, and worked with the Harvard Law Review. After clerking for Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, went on to work at universities in New York, Chicago, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. But what properly established as a major figure in American social science was the publication and reception of his single-most influential work, The Lonely Crowd. This book offered Riesman's study of the variations of pervasive conformity in people with inner-directed and other-directed personalities. But did much more than his most well-known research, and most of that vast research remains relatively obscure within the social sciences today. That is one of the key problems addressed by the recent publication of David Riesman's Writings and Continuing Legacy (2015), hereafter Unpublished Writings.It would be inaccurate to say that is only known for The Lonely Crowd. His commentary on changing American higher education, particularly his The Academic Revolution (1968), co-written with Christopher Jencks, was also widely read and reviewed. However, is lesser known for his political-economic essays, which could be found in the massive collection of essays, Abundance for What? (1964), and also for his sociability studies research, and his more sharply political and psychological interests in American society and US foreign policy. Writings, edited by Keith Kerr, B. Garrick Harden, and Marcus Aldredge corrects many of these latter problems of neglect. This is a valuable book for anyone already-interested and wellread in Riesman's work, as well as for anyone looking for an introduction to his life and research. Indeed, it is a peculiar and significant accomplishment of this volume that it would be just as gratifying for either audience, and I would recommend it to both. …