Daniel Bell (sociologist)

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Daniel Bell

Daniel Bell (actually Daniel Bolotsky ; born May 10, 1919 in New York City , † January 25, 2011 in Cambridge , Massachusetts ) was an American sociologist .

Life

Bell was the son of the Polish-Jewish immigrant Benjamin Bolotsky and his wife Ann Kaplan. After his father died in 1920, his uncle, the dentist Samuel Bolotsky, was appointed his guardian. Bell's first language was Yiddish . He became acquainted with anarchist ideas early on in his family . At the age of 13 he became a member of the Young People's Socialist League. He then committed himself to the "Social Democratic Federation", a right-wing split from the Socialist Party .

From 1935 to 1938, Bell attended City College in New York and graduated with a bachelor's degree . During this study he came into contact with the socialist district Alcove No. 1 , in which he a. a. Irving Kristol met. The City College was followed by a visit to the Graduate School of Columbia University in New York until 1939 .

From 1940 to 1945 Bell earned his living as a journalist for The New Leader (New York), the magazine of the "Social Democratic Federation"; For several years he also acted as editor. In 1943 he married Nora Potashnick, with her he had a daughter named Jordy.

After the war he and his family settled in Chicago , Illinois . There he worked between 1945 and 1948 at the University of Chicago as a lecturer. He also divorced during this period and married Elaine Graham in 1949. When his temporary contract at the university expired, he worked as a journalist again. As such, he was one of the editors of Fortune magazine (Chicago) until 1958 . There he was mainly responsible as an author for union issues.

He had now moved to New York. After divorcing again, he married Pearl Kazin in 1960. With her he had a son, David A. Bell , the future historian. At the same time he was one of the people in charge of the Congress for Cultural Freedom in Paris from 1956 to 1957 . In 1964 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Since 1978 he was a member of the American Philosophical Society .

Teaching

As a professor, he represented the subject of sociology first at Columbia University (1959-1969) and then at Harvard University until his retirement in 1990. As a visiting professor (Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions) he taught in 1987 at the University of Cambridge .

Social theory

With his book The End of Ideology (1960), Daniel Bell noted the decline of apocalyptic class ideologies of the 19th century in the industrial capitalist countries of the West. Welfare policy and democratic participation of the workers would have defused the social conflicts ; the remaining social problems would be approached pragmatically and by consensus. The book met with a broad and controversial reception, which Bell critically examined in 1988 in the public lecture The End of Ideology Revisited at the London School of Economics .

Under the term post-industrial society , which Alain Touraine had chosen as the book title in 1969 , Bell drafted an empirically substantive theory of structural change from an industrial society to a knowledge and service society in 1973 . He was one of the first to coined the catchphrase of the information society . He did not argue in the context of postmodernism , but saw structural change as a consistent continuation and enhancement of modernity .

In the publication Die Kulturkontche des Kapitalismus (1976/1991), Bell noted a conflict of values ​​that led to a cultural crisis in modern western societies: while a “deferment of satisfaction” was demanded in production, the leisure industry lured in the consumer sphere with hedonistic ones Values ​​such as "lust and pleasure, immediate fun, relaxation and letting go".

Fonts (selection)

  • The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties . New York: Collier, 1960. Cambridge, Mass .: Harvard Univ. Press, 2000, ISBN 0-674-00426-4 .
  • The Coming of Post-Industrial Society . New York: Basic Books, 1973, ISBN 0-465-09713-8 .
    • German Translation: The post-industrial society . Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1975, ISBN 3-593-32125-4 .
  • The Social Sciences Since the Second World War . New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1982.
    • German Translation: The social sciences since 1945 . Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1986, ISBN 3-593-33650-2 .
  • The End of Ideology Revisited , In: Government and Opposition . Vol 23/1988, No. 2 (Part I) and No. 3 (Part II).
  • The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism . New York: Basic Books, 1976, ISBN 0-465-01499-2 .
    • German Translation: The cultural contradictions of capitalism . Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1991, ISBN 3-593-34431-9 .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ dts news agency: US sociologist Daniel Bell died at the age of 91 , on January 26, 2011, accessed on January 26, 2011
  2. ^ A b c Hans Bernhard Schmid: A Conservative Social Democrat - To the death of the American sociologist Daniel Bell . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . No. 25 . Zurich January 31, 2011, p. 34 .
  3. ↑ See Chaim Isaac Waxman (ed.): The End of Ideology Debate . Funk & Wagnalls, New York 1968
  4. ^ Jürgen Kaube: On the death of the sociologist Daniel Bell: Diagnostiker der Informationsgesellschaft . Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January 27, 2011, ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed September 17, 2019]).
  5. ↑ Daniel Bell: The cultural contradictions of capitalism . Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1991, p. 90.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Bell, Daniel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bolotsky, Daniel (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American sociologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 10, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH January 25, 2011
Place of death Cambridge , Massachusetts