David Riesman was an American sociologist, educator, and best-selling commentator on American society.
13 Facts About David Riesman
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David Riesman attended Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Harvard Law Review.
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David Riesman clerked for Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis between 1935 and 1936.
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David Riesman taught at what is the University at Buffalo Law School and at the University of Chicago.
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David Riesman worked for Sperry Gyroscope company during the war.
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David Riesman was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.
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David Riesman widely referenced the works of Thorstein Veblen, Max Weber, and Sigmund Freud.
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David Riesman offered a nuanced and complicated portrait of the nation's middle and upper-middle classes.
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David Riesman pictured a nation in the midst of a shift from a society based on production to one fundamentally shaped by the market orientation of a consumer culture.
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David Riesman explored how people used consumer goods to communicate with one another.
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David Riesman argued that the character of post-World War II American society impels individuals to "other-directedness," the preeminent example being modern suburbia, where individuals seek their neighbors' approval and fear being outcast from their community.
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David Riesman was a major public intellectual as well as a sociologist and represented an early example of what sociologists now call "public sociology".
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David Riesman noted that the logic isolated any patterns of resistance that might challenge the university's primary purpose as disciplinary research, dashing their chances of success.