Riesman, David (1909–2002)

Abstract

David Riesman became famous because of his 1950 bestseller The Lonely Crowd . Before that he received his education at Harvard and was a professor of law at Buffalo and of social sciences in the College of the University of Chicago. Later, he returned to Harvard. Besides his devotion to teaching, he acted as a public intellectual during his lifetime. In the Lonely Crowd study, he proposed the change of social character from tradition-directed, to inner-directed, and then to other-directed. This heavily value-laden concept helped make the book one of the rare examples of a social science bestseller. Whereas an inner-directed person follows the instruction one picked up early in one's life, the other-directed person orients his behavior according to the cues he gleans from his peers and the prevailing mass culture. Riesman later on abandoned his own characterology but he continued to be concerned about changes in society and politics. His less-known publications on higher education demonstrate his familiarity with the world of undergraduate education in the United States and show his incorruptible personality vis-a-vis cultural pressures.