Abundance for What?

by David Riesman

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138518605
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	01/30/2024
Pages:	694
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

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