David Riesman
David Riesman
David Riesmanwas a sociologist, educator and best-selling commentator on American society...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNon-Fiction Author
Date of Birth22 September 1909
CountryUnited States of America
education mass-culture cities
Our society offers little in the way of reeducation for those who have been torn away from their traditional culture and suddenly exposed to all the blandishments of mass culture-even the churches which follow the hillbillies to the city often make use of the same "hard sell" that the advertisers and politicians do.
industry mass media retailers
The mass media are the wholesalers; the peer-groups, the retailers of the communications industry
american-sociologist autonomy both created equal free freedom individual lose men seeking social true
The idea that men are created free and equal is both true and misleading: men are created different; they lose their social freedom and their individual autonomy in seeking to become like each other.
men class different
Men are created different; they lose their social freedom and their individual autonomy in seeking to become like each other.
communication media gossip
Nowadays, truth is the greatest news. The mass media are the wholesalers, the peer groups, the retailers of the communications industry.
Words not only affect us temporarily; they change us, they socialize or unsocialize us.
zest acquisition leisure
It is among the less privileged groups relatively new to leisure and consumption that the zest for possessions retains something of its pristine energy.
meaningful play meaningful-work
Those who are excluded from meaningful work are, by an large, excluded from meaningful play.
roles remains ifs
If anything remains more or less unchanged, it will be the role of women.
children cities doctors
The children themselves, before they get access to a car, are captives of their suburb, save for those families where the housewives surrender continuity in their own lives to chauffeur their children to lessons, doctors, and other services that could be reached via public transport in the city.
mean groups hegemony
The ethical regime [of the Jews] was quite definitely Ptolemaic, revolving around the small group of Jews, not the larger Gentile group and, accordingly, they learned to remain unimpressed by Gentile temporal power. Being unimpressed did not mean being unafraid material power might beat or starve one to death; it did mean refusing to surrender moral hegemony to the majority merely because it had power.
media people empathy
The media, far from being a conspiracy to dull the political sense of the people, could be viewed as a conspiracy to disguise the extent of political indifference.
taken democracies-have play
A spurious democracy has influenced both our research methods (I am sometimes tempted to define "validity" as part of the context of an experiment demanding so little in the way of esoteric gift that any number can play at it, provided they have taken a certain number of courses) and our research subjects (it would be deemed snobbish to investigate only the best people).
children cities people
One of the things people are fleeing when they leave the city is the need either to reject people who are less well educated than themselves, or to accept them with all that implies for their children's education and future placement in the society.