1st Edition

Abundance for What?

By David Riesman Copyright 1993
    626 Pages
    by Routledge

    694 Pages
    by Routledge

    This classic collection of essays by Riesman discusses the implications of affluence in America. Riesman maintains that the question that should be raised by wealth has shifted over time from how to obtain wealth to how to make use of it. Another key theme concerns issues relevant to higher education, such as academic freedom. This book examines the notion that America is not as open a society as it may appear to be; it shows how social science may be used to explain why this is so. In a brilliant, lengthy reevaluation Riesman both clarifies and revises that earlier assessment with unusual luster and candor.

    Introduction to the Transaction Edition

    Section I: The Impact of the Cold War

    Preface

    National Purpose

    The American Crisis

    Reflections on Containment and Initiatives

    The Nylon War

    Some Observations on the Limits of Totalitarian Power

    The Cold War and the West: Answers Given in a

    Partisan Review Symposium

    Section II: Abundance for What?

    Preface

    Careers and Consumer Behavior

    A Career Drama in a Middle-aged Farmer

    Work and Leisure: Fusion or Polarity?

    Leisure and Work in Postindustrial Society

    Some Issues in the Future of Leisure

    Sociability, Permissiveness, and Equality: A Preliminary

    Formulation

    The Suburban Dislocation

    Flight and Search in the New Suburbs

    Autos in America

    Abundance for What?

    The Found Generation

    Some Continuities and Discontinuities in the Education of Women

    The Search for Challenge

    Section III: Abundance for Whom?

    Preface

    The Social and Psychological Setting of Veblen's Economic

    Theory

     

    The Relevance of Thorstein Veblen

    Self and Society: Reflections on Some Turks in Transition

    The Oral Tradition, the Written Word, and the Screen

    Image

    Section IV: Social Science Research: Problems, Methods, Opportunities

    Preface

    Law and Sociology

    Tocqueville as Ethnographer

    Introduction to Crestwood Heights

    The Sociology of the Interview

    Orbits of Tolerance, Interviewers, and Elites

    Interviewers, Elites, and Academic Freedom

    The Study of National Character: Some Observations on the

    American Case

    Acknowledgments and Notes on Previous Publication

    Index

    Biography

    David Riesman is the Henry Ford II Professor Emeritus of Social Sciences at Harvard University. He has also taught at the University of Chicago, and Johns Hopkins. Among his most impoetant books are The Lonely Crowd. Faces in the Crowd, Individualism Reconsidered, Thorstein Veblen: A Critical Interpretation, and Constraint and Variety in American Education. He is arguably America's foremost sociologist of education, whose work has inspired a generation of new analysis and synthesis.