Daniel Bell (Sociology)

Introduction
Daniel Bell (b. 1919–d. 2011) was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan into a family of immigrant Jewish garment workers from eastern Europe. His father died when Daniel was eight months old, and the family lived in impoverished circumstances throughout his childhood. For Bell, politics and an intellectual life were closely intertwined even in his early years, with formative experiences in Jewish intellectual circles, membership in the Young Peoples Socialist League from the age of thirteen. He was later a part of the radical political milieu of City College, where he was close to radical Marxist networks, which also included Irving Kristol. He received a bachelor’s degree in social science from City College, New York, in 1938 and spent a year studying sociology at Columbia University in 1939. During the 1940s, Bell’s socialist inclinations became increasingly anticommunist, shifting away from Marxian criticism of capitalism to more pragmatic notions of a mixed economy combining private and public elements. He began academic teaching, first at the University of Chicago in the mid-1940s, and then at Columbia from 1952. Bell received his PhD from Columbia in 1960, and he worked there until 1969, when he moved to Harvard. From the mid-1950s until his death in 2011, Bell combined a very active profile in scholarly research with the role of public intellectual, pursued through lectures and more limited episodes of journalism, as well as involvement in public policy circles. The peak years of Bell’s academic publishing center on three major books, The End of Ideology (1960), The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973), and The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976). This body of work represents a major contribution to the sociology of modernity, conducted through general analysis of social and cultural trends and incisive revisions of leading social theories. This work drew on Bell’s early rejection of Marxian schema of radical social transformation animated by class conflict. This was replaced by a greater Weberian emphasis on bureaucratization and the disenchantment of modern life with the exhaustion of dominant ideologies enshrined in socialist and liberal utopias. The rise of service industries based on knowledge rather than private capital, combined with the restless hedonistic culture of consumerism and self-actualization, ushered in a new world in which the relationships between economy, politics, and culture needed to be rethought, and political strategies revised. Bell, like Weber, was impressed by the multidimensional complexities of social change, but like Durkheim, he was haunted by the uncertain place of religion and the sacred in an increasingly profane world. Bell’s sociology and public intellectual life was directed and dedicated over sixty-five years to addressing these major challenges. His influence may have declined in the last quarter of the 20th century, but it has subsequently been revived in continuing debates over the dynamics and contradictions of modernity and postmodernism. At his death in 2011 he was working on a study of the “Rebirth of Utopia.” Bell remains a significant reference point and inspiration in the renewal and refocusing of macrosociological theory in response to social change.
General Overviews
Bell’s published works includes familiar items such as books, academic journal articles, book chapters, and lectures, but he produced also a mass of journalistic output spread across dozens of outlets. It is estimated that he wrote fourteen books and over two hundred scholarly articles, many of them in general intellectual journals like The Public Interest, Commentary, and Daedalus, rather than specifically sociological journals. Some of Bell’s prolific journal output is anthologized in his major works. The writing style is consistently engaging and accessible, with an enormous range of references across literature, philosophy, and public life as well as sociology and the social sciences. Bell 1991 is the best starting point for an appreciation of the breadth of Bell’s interests and intellectual reference points. Waters 1996 is the best general overview, while Waters 2003 is a much shorter contribution in the same vein.
Bell, Daniel. 1991. The winding passage: Sociological essays and journeys. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
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The book is arranged under five themes: “Techne and Themis,” dealing with technology and society; “Prophets of Utopia,” including Veblen, Fourier, and Marx; “Intellectuals and the New Class,” on theories of social class; “Directions of Social Change”; and “Culture and Beliefs.”
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Waters, Malcolm. 1996. Daniel Bell. London: Routledge.
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The most comprehensive and insightful general study of Bell, written eleven years before his death. Waters covers Bell’s three major books as well as other work on labor and work, education, and technology, and includes succinct and balanced criticism and evaluation.
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Waters, Malcolm. 2003. Daniel Bell. In Key contemporary social theorists. Edited by Larry Ray and Anthony Elliott, 52–57. Oxford: Blackwell.
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This is a good short introduction to Bell’s life and work, though more critical of his contribution to social theory than Waters 1996.
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Resources, Biographies, Bibliographies
There is no comprehensive biography of Daniel Bell. Most of the biographical commentary, including Dittberner 1979, Brick 1986, and Liebowitz 1985, deals with the early and middle periods of his work up to the early 1960s. Bell also wrote a number of autobiographical pieces, notably the first section of Bell 1991, that shed light on his intellectual evolution. There is also no comprehensive bibliography of the totality of Bell’s work that includes both his scholarly and journalistic work. However, Dittberner 1979 includes a useful comprehensive bibliography for the period 1940–1960.
Bell, Daniel. 1991. The winding passage: Sociological essays and journeys. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
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First published in 1980, this volume includes a short but informative intellectual autobiography, as well as an extensive set of essays previously published across a wide range of journals and edited volumes.
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Bell, Daniel. 2006. The early years. The New Leader 89.1–2: 9–13.
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This article provides valuable autobiographical comments on Bell’s work as managing editor of the socialist journal The New Leader between 1941 and 1944.
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Brick, Howard. 1986. Daniel Bell and the decline of intellectual radicalism: Social theory and political reconciliation in the 1940s. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press.
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A major intellectual biography centered on the early period of Bell’s work, and his transition from socialism to sociology. An insightful account of the challenges facing American socialists, this book traces Bell’s work up to 1960. Views The End of Ideology as a “collage of social description” (p. 200), reflecting a strong element of uncertainty and indeterminacy in Bell’s work.
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Dittberner, Job. 1979. The end of ideology and American social thought, 1930–60. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press.
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This work sheds particular light on Bell’s early work and on the conservative temper of his intellectual legacy.
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Dorman, Joseph, ed. 2000. Arguing the world: New York intellectuals in their own words. New York: Free Press.
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The Arguing the World project focuses on intellectual circles in New York. The prize-winning film, released in 1998, centered on Bell and three other key figures: Irving Howe, Irving Kristol, and Nathan Glazer. Each spoke on a range of topics. An accompanying book, Dorman 2000, provides a text version of the interviews, together with a thoughtful introductory essay. The project also generated a website, also titled Arguing the World.
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Liebowitz, Nathan. 1985. Daniel Bell and the agony of modern liberalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
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A major intellectual biography based on extensive interviews. Focuses on Bell’s early years. Emphasizes internal tensions between Bell’s optimism in progress through social reform, as found in Dewey, and pessimism derived from Niebuhr, who doubted the possibility of value-based politics.
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Selected Major Works
The three key books, Bell 1988 (first published in 1960), Bell 1999 (first published in 1973), and Bell 1996a (first published in 1976) represent the core of Bell’s contribution to sociology. Bell 1996b (first published in 1952), and Bell 1966 are two further substantial but somewhat neglected works. Bell 1982 and Bell 1990 are two shorter but interesting examples of the breadth of his interests. Bell’s work has often been republished in various forms, notably Bell 1991. This listing provides accessible references to his most important publications.
Bell, Daniel. 1966. The reforming of general education: The Columbia College experience in its national setting. New York: Columbia Univ. Press
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An extensive review of the philosophy, history, and contemporary relevance of general liberal arts education in the United States, together with some proposals for reform. A generally sympathetic treatment of the social value of a general liberal arts education against the background of the development of a knowledge-based economy and more immediate political and student unrest in the mid-1960s. This book is rich in historical and philosophical ideas, but has faded from sight in recent scholarship.
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Bell, Daniel. 1982. The social sciences since the Second World War. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
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A short book in two parts. The first deals with generic features of social scientific thought, including the key role of economics, modeling mind and society, and problems with holistic approaches. The second looks at some substantive general schools of thought, including socio-biology, neo-Marxism, and structuralism.
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Bell, Daniel. 1988. The end of ideology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
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This work was first published in 1960, reprinted in 1988 with additional comments, and reprinted again in 2000 with further additions by Bell, responding to a range of criticisms. The book is more a set of essays than a tightly organized text around a central thesis. Essays, some of them already published elsewhere, range over topics such as the changing nature of work, class, the unions, status, and Keynes, Schumpeter, and Galbraith.
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Bell, Daniel. 1990. The third technological revolution and its possible socio-economic consequences. Japan: Shukan Diamond.
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This work extends the general argument about the coming of a service-based post-industrial society to focus on the information economy. The discussion of electronic communication, digitalization, and new materials technology also touches on increased capacities for surveillance of individuals.
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Bell, Daniel. 1991. The winding passage: Sociological essays and journeys. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
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This important work is an anthology of articles and book chapters from the 1960s and 1970s. It has been used extensively by commentators like Malcolm Waters (see Waters 1996, cited under General Overviews), to piece together the structure and logic of Bell’s social theory.
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Bell, Daniel. 1996a. The cultural contradictions of capitalism. New York: Basic Books.
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First published in 1976, this book focuses on the cultural trends in the contemporary evolution of capitalism and modernity. It is the most integrated of Bell’s three major works, rather than a collection of loosely related essays. Bell diagnoses cultural chaos arising from a contradiction between the work ethic on the one side and an emerging culture of self-gratification and consumer hedonism on the other. See also Culture.
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Bell, Daniel. 1996b. Marxian socialism in the United States. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.
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First published in 1952, and reprinted in 1996, this book is a commentary on contrasts between the importance of socialism in most of Europe, compared with its relative failure in the United States (known as the problem of American exceptionalism.) Bell’s distinctive contribution was to argue that the romantic otherworldly stance of American socialists was responsible.
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Bell, Daniel. 1999. The coming of post-industrial society: A venture in social forecasting. New York: Basic Books.
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First published in 1973, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society deals with structural changes in technology, work, class, and power centered on the growing centrality of knowledge to social change. This central hypothesis has been widely criticized. See The Post-Industrial Society Thesis.
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Interviews and Lectures
In addition to his books and articles, Bell gave a number of insightful and revealing interviews. Dowling 1976, Chernow 1979, and Dittberner 1979 focus on Bell’s work in the 1960s and 1970s. Bell 2006, Bell, et al. 2006, and Shechter 2011 shed light on the latter period of his life and work, supplementing the limited scope of available biographical studies. Bell 2011 represents his last major interview.
Bell, Daniel. 2006. Ends and rebirths: An interview with Peter Beilharz. Thesis Eleven 85 (May): 93–103.
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In this interview, Bell discusses his conception of the sociological enterprise and where he differs from Parsons. He also clarifies what he meant by “the end of ideology,” and how there has recently been a “rebirth of utopia.” Bell also emphasizes the roots of much of his thinking in Jewish culture, and explains why the distinction between the sacred and the profane is a foundation for his sociological work.
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Bell, Daniel. 2011. The Last Word. The Utopian, 10 February.
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Conducted several months before his death, this interview contains interesting comments on the global financial crisis and the pitfalls of futurology.
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Bell, Daniel, Wolf Lepenies, and Harold Island. 2006. On society and sociology: Past and present. Daedalus 135.1 (Winter): 120–123.
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Details a “dialogue” in 2004 between Bell and Lepenies (Free University of Berlin). Sheds light on Bell’s commitment to an ethic of responsibility, and how this informed his public intellectual life. Also published in German in Die Welt, 12 January 2005.
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Chernow, Ron. 1979. The cultural contradictions of Daniel Bell. Change 11.2 (March): 12–17.
DOI: 10.1080/00091383.1979.10569601Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Focuses mainly on the 1960s. It includes comments on Bell’s major writings from this period, and a discussion of student radicalism and Bell’s work on reform of the university curriculum.
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Dittberner, Job. 1979 The end of ideology and American social thought, 1930–60. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press.
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Includes an interview from 1972 with interesting comments from Bell on what he regarded as a Jewish fear of passions let loose in social arrangements.
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Dowling, William. 1976. Conversation with Daniel Bell. Organizational Dynamics 5.1 (Summer): 34–49.
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A wide-ranging interview with some interesting but problematic comments from Bell on social and political changes that he believes involve the subordination of the corporation.
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Shechter, Benli M. 2011. Why Bell matters. Society 48:413–419.
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Commentary on an interview conducted in 2010, dealing with Bell’s political and intellectual work from the late 1930s to the early 1950s.
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Central Concepts
Daniel Bell’s sociology was founded on generalizations informed by empirical evidence—both historical and contemporary. Such issues were applied to macrosociological issues, including the axial principles of social structure, the dynamics of social change, and the cultural grounding of social order. This work occupied a space between the abstract grand theory of social systems proposed by Parsons and empirical sociology based on quantitative analysis of large data sets. Bell saw himself rather as a specialist in generalizations.
Society Based on Three Realms: Social Structure, Polity, and Culture
Bell’s theory of society was founded on core elements derived from classical sociologists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, notably Marx, Weber, and Durkheim. Marx’s holistic philosophy of history and structural determinism was rejected, however, while Bell’s early interests in labor and capital were recast in a more multidimensional framework. In contrast to Parsons’s conception of social systems as functionally integrated wholes, Bell conceived of society in terms of looser arrangements linking social structure, polity, and culture (Bell 1991 and Bell 1996). Such arrangements might involve disjuncture and contradictions between and within different realms of social life, as in the “cultural contradictions of capitalism thesis.” For Bell, secular rationality contained no inherent basis for social integration or social order. Much of Bell’s work on social change involves the playing out of social disjunctures between social structure, polity, and culture across history and in the contemporary setting. Waters 1996 is the best commentary on this.
Bell, Daniel. 1991. Technology, nature and society: The vicissitudes of three world views and the confusion of realms. In The winding passage: Sociological essays and journeys. By Daniel Bell, 3–33. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
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An early version of the three realms argument based on technology, nature, and society, written in 1972 and rewritten in 1975. It differed from the formulation elaborated in The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (Bell 1996).
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Bell, Daniel. 1996. The cultural contradictions of capitalism. New York: Basic Books.
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The fullest account Bell gives of the three realms and the disjuncture between them. Many critics disputed Bell’s assumption of a radical disjuncture between the capitalist economy and cultural order. See also Economy and Cultural Contradictions Argument.
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Waters, Malcolm. 1996. Daniel Bell. London: Routledge.
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Waters offers an extended elaboration and critique of Bell’s notion of three distinct realms, each with their own logic of development. These realms are not always consistently or persuasively defined. There are also difficulties in deciding whether disjuncture between the different societal realms is generated by Bell’s conceptual edifice rather than observable processes in the social world.
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Economy
Bell retained certain Marxist elements in his conception of economic life, while rejecting others. Common elements, as outlined in Marxian Socialism in the United States (Bell 1996b, cited under Selected Major Works), included the emphasis on the techno-economic structure of society as the source of hierarchy and subordination, and the linear development of a succession of techno-economic forms of economic organization. Bell 1990 and Bell 1999 (both cited under Selected Major Works) explore the shift toward a service-based post-industrial society (see also Post-Industrial Society Thesis). He nonetheless rejected standard Marxist conceptions of capitalism as the key to power and inequality in modern society, and with it the emphasis on labor, and socialism as the locus of radical social change. Social liberation would depend rather on developments within the cultural sphere. Miller 1975 covers debates on Bell’s neglect of corporate power, while Nicholls 1975 investigates the apparent incoherence of his views of social class as an aspect of social structure. At a more conceptual level, Abrahams 1977 criticizes Bell’s distinction between economy and culture. Waters 1996 gives an accessible commentary on Bell’s work and the criticisms that can be made of it.
Abrahams, Roger. 1977. Contradicting Bell. American Journal of Sociology 83.2 (September): 463–469.
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Uses Sahlins’s concept of the economy as a cultural as much as a material system to criticize Bell’s strong distinction between economy and culture.
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Miller, S. Michael. 1975. Notes on neo-capitalism. Theory and Society 2.1 (Spring): 1–35.
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Offers a broad critique of the failure of Bell and Galbraith to come to terms with the workings of corporate capitalism and its centrality to power structures in economic and political life.
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Nicholls, Theo. 1975. Review Symposium. Sociology 9.2 (May): 349–352.
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Sees Bell’s approach to the economy as insightful but incomplete, notably in lack of clarity about the relationships between changing occupational structures and capitalism.
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Waters, Malcolm. 1996. Daniel Bell. London: Routledge.
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Waters provides a detailed exegesis of the general features of Bell’s understanding of the general features of the economy or “techno-economic structure” (p. 40). He also identifies problems of shifting and uncertain definition as well as weaknesses in the handling of corporate power. Waters regards Bell’s discussion of capitalism as “bizarre,” and is equally scathing of his discussion of social class.
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Polity
Bell’s general conception of the polity involves both institutions of authority and underlying normative principles such as justice and egalitarianism. This approach really centers on modern Western nation-states rather than any more generic perspective. States exercise power through policies arrived at through interest group bargaining as well as technocratic judgments. After the end of ideology, political parties become pragmatic, risking a decline in political commitment. Waters 1996 argues that the polity is the least well theorized of the three realms, though he finds Bell’s normative construction of democratic politics as the public household interesting. Bell’s political sociology comes alive and makes its greatest contribution, according to Turner 1989, in its anticipation of postmodern themes and in the tension between citizenship rights and fiscal challenges. Janowitz 1974 is more skeptical. Block 2006 focuses on Bell’s comments on individualism and its political implications.
Block, Fred. 2006. Daniel Bell’s prophecy. Breakthrough Journal 1 (Fall): 53–61.
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Maintains that Bell anticipated the middle-class tax revolt fueled by individualistic cultures of resentment against welfare recipients and big government. Tensions between entitlement and public spending are also relevant to the global financial crisis.
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Janowitz, Morris. 1974. Review Symposium. American Journal of Sociology 80.1 (July): 230–236.
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In a broader review of The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (Bell 1999, cited under Selected Major Works), Janowitz makes some critical points against Bell’s political sociology. They center on the dubious linkage made by Bell between changes in the occupational structure and the central role claimed for knowledge, scientists, and professionals in contemporary society. Bell’s political sociology is compared unfavorably with Schumpeter’s.
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Turner, Bryan. 1989. From post-industrial society to postmodern politics: The political sociology of Daniel Bell. In Contemporary political culture: Politics in a post-modern age. Edited by John Gibbins, 199–217. London: SAGE.
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An extremely insightful commentary on the strengths and weaknesses of Bell’s political sociology. Turner argues against the view that Bell’s conservatism hampered an understanding of the politics of modernism and postmodernism. He identifies the influence of Nietzsche, Schumpeter, and T.H. Marshall on Bell’s discussion of the tensions between citizenship entitlements and the fiscal limits of the state. He is also critical of Bell’s account of political legitimacy.
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Waters, Malcolm. 1996. Daniel Bell. London: Routledge.
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Once again Waters provides a well-informed and judicious explication of Bell’s views on the polity, evaluating their strengths and weaknesses. He also provides an extensive critical commentary on the American political domain within which Bell’s political sociology emerged.
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Culture
Bell’s conception of culture differs significantly from most other social theorists (see Bell 1999, cited under Selected Major Works). It is narrower than the conventional emphasis on general patterns and ways of life, but broader than the patrician focus on the expressive pastimes of elites. Waters 1996 (cited under Polity) characterizes Bell’s position as “expressive symbolism,” whether in the aesthetic or religious domains. These include key existential questions on the meaning of life, death, love, and spirituality, dealt with in Bell 1991. Bell 1996a (cited under Selected Major Works) explores how this generic sense of culture focused on self-expression and actualization leads to unrooted hedonism and the unraveling of social ties in modern society. The only way out of this seemed to be a revival of religion. Subsequent commentators have considered whether this position amounts to a sterile conservatism or has more positive features. (See, for example, Touraine 1977 and Habermas and Ben-Habib 1981). Graña 1989 and Gilbert 2013 also provide important evaluative insights into Bell on culture.
Bell, Daniel. 1991. Beyond modernism, beyond self. In The winding passage: Sociological essays and journeys. By Daniel Bell, 275–302. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
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Explores 19th- and 20th-century literary and philosophical modernists critical of rationality and utilitarianism, and the postmodern extension of aesthetic modernism into culture and society. Bell diagnoses an increasingly weary self under postmodern conditions.
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Gilbert, Andrew. 2013. The culture crunch: The cultural contradictions of capitalism. Thesis Eleven 118.1: 83–95.
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Notes the vulnerability of Bell’s cultural conservatism to the charge that it fails to distinguish between transformations in values and the end of values.
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Graña, Cesar. 1989. Meaning and authenticity: Further essays in the sociology of art. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
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Argues for the significance of Bell’s view of culture as “a kind of demarcated play area,” to do with “value gestures and spiritual creation” (p. 11).
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Habermas, Jurgen, and Seyla Ben-Habib. 1981. Modernity versus postmodernity. In Special issue: Modernism. New German Critique 22 (Winter): 3–14.
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A very generous critique of Bell’s views on culture. Bell is regarded as “the most brilliant of the American neoconservatives” (p. 6). Yet this paper argues that his arguments about hedonism and modern culture shift responsibility for the dissolution of social ties away from a capitalist modernization of economy and society and toward cultural modernists.
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Touraine, Alain. 1977. What is Daniel Bell afraid of? American Journal of Sociology 83.2 (September): 469–473.
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Sees Bell 1990 (cited under Selected Major Works) as the work of a moralist rather than a piece of cultural history. Touraine is skeptical about the historical adequacy of Bell’s assumption that contemporary society is uniquely marked by the dissolution of social ties. Society is no more incoherent than it used to be, hence Bell’s conservative lament.
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Sacred and Secular
Bell’s approach to culture placed the sacred and the secular at the heart of his diagnoses of social change and prognoses for the future (Bell 1978 and Bell 2006). These texts explain why he felt the concept of secularization was a muddle, and why religion is far from dead. His concepts of the sacred and what he called the “Great Profanation” have strong Durkheimian echoes (O’Neill 1995).
Bell, Daniel. 1978. The return of the sacred: The argument about the future of religion. Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Science 31.6 (March): 29–58.
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Distinguishes between secularization as the differentiation of institutional authority away from religious bodies, and disenchantment in the realms of belief and culture. The essay deals with the exhaustion of modernism, the eclipse of Marxism, and the tedium of self-interest. Bell is confident a return of the sacred will take place. A slightly amended version also reprinted in Bell 1991, pp. 324–354 (cited under General Overviews and Selected Major Works).
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Bell, Daniel. 2006. Ends and rebirths: An interview with Peter Beilharz. Thesis Eleven 85 (May): 93–103.
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Bell, in this late interview, maintains that a concern with the sacred is a foundation for his sociological work. This is set, in large measure, within Jewish cultural traditions, to which Durkheim is also assimilated.
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O’Neill, John. 1995. The poverty of postmodernism. London: Routledge.
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Emphasizes Bell’s argument that capitalism seems to have more to fear from its cultural contradictions and the fragmentation of social life than from class struggle. Points to the common search for a revived social bond in both Bell and Fredric Jameson, though this Durkheimian project is taken in different directions, with Bell looking backward to conservatism and Jameson forward to radical utopianism.
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Main Topics
The main topics in Bell’s extensive body of work are best organized through the very general theme of social change. His main focus was theoretical, but not in overtly abstract form. Instead, he constantly sought out and interrogated economic and social indicators of change, coming up with complex and sophisticated trains of thought, subject to periodic deepening and revision.
Social Change
Bell’s overarching topic was the dynamics and consequences of social change in general, and with particular reference to the contemporary Western world. This focus is sustained across his three major works: The End of Ideology, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. They key questions are: “What explains patterns of social change and their consequences?” and “How can society hold together as a result of the de-stabilizing and contradictory processes of change?” And, as a public intellectual, the further additional question was “What can be done about it?” These questions were essentially the key questions of classical 19th-century sociology, whose interests he continues and reformulates. They underlie all Bell’s major books and articles, as Waters 1996 (cited under General Overviews and Polity) makes clear. They also underlie his more substantive contributions to different fields of sociology, such as the sociology of ethnicity, or world disorder.
The End of Ideology Thesis
Bell’s arguments about the “end of ideology” examine changes in social structure and his broader concerns with the fate of culture and social order in modern Western society. This thesis draws on Bell’s earlier work both on the dehumanization of work and the cult of efficiency, and on changes in the American class structure, including middle-class employment and the expansion of suburbia. Problems with what Bell means by ideology create gross misunderstanding (Skinner 1985), as well as more accurately focused criticism (Waters 1996, cited under General Overviews and Polity). Meanwhile, Waxman 1968 and Clark 2005 provide insights into the intellectual context to Bell’s book. Dalton 2006 moves away from the terrain of social theory to systematic testing of the thesis.
Bell, Daniel. 1988. The end of ideology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
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The overarching proposition in this book of essays is the exhaustion of Marxism as a “faith system.” Ideology, here, is defined contextually in terms of the worldview and political programs of Marxism, rather than generically as some kind of universal.
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Bell, Daniel. 1990. The misreading of ideology: The social determination of ideas in Marx’s work. Berkeley Journal of Sociology 35:1–54.
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This paper offers a “guide to the perplexed,” arising in part because of lack of consistency in Marx’s work, on which Bell provides a detailed exegesis. It is also useful for those who wish to get at Bell’s intentions in writing The End of Ideology. Bell offers conceptual clarification of what he takes ideology to mean, and reaffirms the view that ideology, in terms of systems of political faith that mobilize action, is not dead.
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Bell, Daniel. 2000. The resumption of history in the new century. In The end of ideology. By Daniel Bell, xi–xxviii. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
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A new introduction to the 2000 reprinting of The End of Ideology. Takes up the argument that ideology defined contextually is dead, and that history has resumed as some kind of interplay between the struggles of peoples, institutional structures, and contingent events.
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Clark, Terry. 2005. Who constructed post-industrial society? An informal account of a Columbia paradigm shift pre-Daniel Bell. The American Sociologist 36.1 (Spring): 23–46.
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Maintains that Bell’s argument was prefigured in work by the previous generation of sociologists at Columbia, including Lazarsfeld, Merton, and their colleagues.
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Dalton, Russell. 2006. Social modernization and the End of Ideology debate: Patterns of ideological polarization. Japanese Journal of Political Science 7.1 (April): 1–22.
DOI: 10.1017/S1468109905002045Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Tests the “End of Ideology thesis” with data from the World Values Study across seventy nations. Concerned primarily with quantifiable dimensions of ideological polarization. Supports Bell’s argument in that political polarization is greater in poorer, less-developed societies compared with the advanced industrial world. Doesn’t come to grips with the theoretical subtlety of Bell’s position.
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Skinner, Quentin, ed. 1985. The return of grand theory in the social sciences. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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Skinner’s introduction contains a jaundiced and inaccurate portrayal of Bell’s “end of ideology” thesis by an influential political philosopher.
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Waxman, Chaim, ed. 1968. The end of ideology debate. New York: Funk and Wagnalls.
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An anthology of previously published writing pertaining to the end of ideology from Mannheim and Aron to Bell, Lipset, and Harrington. Michael Harrington’s essay, “The Anti-Ideology Ideologues,” is an important statement from an American New Left activist about high levels of uncertainty about the relationship between radical ideology and social change.
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The Post-Industrial Society Thesis
Bell was not the first to use the term “post-industrial society.” His contribution was one of a number published in the 1970s and 1980s. The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (Bell 1999, cited under Selected Major Works) first appeared in 1973, while Bell 1991 elaborates his position further. Lasch 1973 offers a very critical response to Bell’s book. Kumar 1978 provides a more powerful and intellectual critique of Bell’s thesis, including problems of conceptual confusion and empirical plausibility. Gershuny 1977 elaborates the empirical shortcomings of Bell’s work, while Webster 1995 compares Bell with other theorists of post-industrial society. Webster 2005, written thirty years later, suggests that Bell’s thesis holds up well. Brint 2001 offers a thoughtful analysis of the place of Bell’s thesis within wider debates on post-industrial society.
Bell, Daniel. 1991. Teletest and technology: New networks of knowledge and information in postindustrial society. In The winding passage: Sociological essays and journeys. By Daniel Bell, 34–65. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
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An extension of the theme of post-industrialism, knowledge, and information, first written in 1977. It anticipates some of the theories of the network economy and society that emerged in the 1990s.
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Brint, Steven. 2001. Professionals and the “knowledge economy”: Rethinking the theory of post-industrial society. Current Sociology 49.4 (July): 101–132.
DOI: 10.1177/0011392101049004007Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Considers a range of theories dealing with post-industrial society, setting Bell’s contribution in a broader thematic and evaluative context. Bell’s work is favorably reviewed, though its speculative tone leaves many issues incomplete.
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Gershuny, Jay. 1977. Post-industrial society: The myth of the service economy. Futures 9.2 (April): 103–114
DOI: 10.1016/0016-3287(77)90003-9Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Using UK data dealing with expenditure on goods and services, this paper disputes Bell’s arguments about the rise of the service sector. Gershuny sees rising employment in the service sector as a manifestation of the specialized division of labor, not the rise of a service economy.
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Kumar, Krishan. 1978. Prophecy and progress: The sociology of industrial and post-industrial society. London: Allen Lane.
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Kumar takes Bell to task for erecting an overinflated theory of the emergence of post-industrial society on the basis of limited evidence of social trends. Rises in service employment, for example, do not necessarily presage a new form of post-industrial society, since industrial manufacturing never employed the majority of the workforce previously. Service work is also very heterogeneous. Bell’s handling of the context to statistical data is seen as superficial.
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Lasch, Christopher. 1973. Take me to your leader. New York Review of Books, 18 October.
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A highly critical review of Bell, which diagnoses both a lack of theoretical rigor and a casual attitude to evidence. Bell replies in the edition of 24 January 1974 in similarly dismissive terms, claiming that Lasch ignores the theoretical structure and intentions of the book.
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Webster, Frank. 1995. Theories of information society. London: Routledge.
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Compares the contributions of Bell, Giddens, Habermas, Baudrillard, and Castells to theories of information society. Highly critical of the coherence and value of Bell’s work.
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Webster, Frank. 2005. Understanding the information age: The uneasy relationship between sociology and cultural studies in England. Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 31.1 (January): 27–46.
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A more generous appreciation of Bell’s originality, emphasizing that until Castell’s work in the 1990s, Bell’s critics had offered little by way of an alternative.
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The Cultural Contradictions Argument
This argument about a major cultural fracture in modern western society, was originally published in The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism in 1976. A twentieth anniversary reprint included new comments by Bell (see Bell 1996a, cited under Selected Major Works). Criticism has focused both on Bell’s neglect of new social movements, argued in Touraine 1977, while Brint and Proctor 2011 reconsiders the notion that the work ethic and hedonism are incompatible. Bensman and Vidich 1999 disputes Bell’s general assumption that culture is autonomous from the economy. Meanwhile, Gilbert 2013 places Bell’s argument in the context of thirty years of subsequent debate.
Bensman, Joseph, and Arthur J. Vidich. 1999. The cultural contradictions of Daniel Bell. International Journal of Culture, Politics and Society 12.3 (Spring): 503–514.
DOI: 10.1023/A:1025929115856Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Argues that Bell fails to explain the cultural conflicts of the 1960s and 1970s. The cultural contradictions thesis is overgeneralized and ignores developments in the economy and social structure that explain cultural restlessness and conflict. Bell exaggerates the autonomy of culture from the economy, and fails to explore the new classes that are bearers of new cultural processes.
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Brint, Steven, and Kristopher Proctor. 2011. Middle-class respectability in twenty-first-century America: Work and lifestyle in the professional-managerial stratum. In Thrift and thriving in America: Capitalism and moral order from the Puritans to the present. Edited by Joshua Yates and James Hunter, 462–490. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199769063.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Maintains that self-discipline at work and hedonism in leisure are not contradictory. Based on historical evidence on the life-worlds of the American professional middle class.
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Gilbert, Andrew. 2013. The culture crunch: The cultural contradictions of capitalism. Thesis Eleven 118.1: 83–95.
DOI: 10.1177/0725513613500383Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Combines a helpful reconstruction of Bell’s argument, with a wide-ranging summary of more recent debates on the issues raised.
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Touraine, Alain. 1977. What is Daniel Bell afraid of? American Journal of Sociology 83.2 (September): 469–473.
DOI: 10.1086/226562Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A short but incisive review of Cultural Contradictions (Bell 1996a, cited under Selected Major Works), identifying inadequacies in Bell’s treatment of social agency, cultural movements, and conflicts.
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Labor, Capital, and Socialism
Bell’s earliest sociological writing was concerned with American labor and the failure of socialism in the United States. In addition to labor journalism, his major study Marxian Socialism in the United States was first published in 1952 (Bell 1996b, cited under Selected Major Works). Other significant work such as an essay titled “Work and its Discontents: The Cult of Efficiency in America,” first published in 1956, appeared in The End of Ideology (Bell 1988, cited under Selected Major Works; see also Economy). Criticisms of Bell’s work in this field are usefully summarized in Waters 1996. Olsen 1974 criticizes Bell’s evasion of class analysis, while Beilharz 2013 sees Bell 1966 (cited under Selected Major Works) as a major neglected work.
Beilharz, Peter. 2013. Daniel Bell: American Menshevik. Thesis Eleven 118.1: 64–71.
DOI: 10.1177/0725513613500298Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Beilharz draws out the significance of Marxian Socialism (Bell 1996b, cited under Selected Major Works) for both the history of ideas and cultural sociology. He also uses the distinction between ideology and utopia to show the connection between Marxian Socialism and Bell’s last unfinished book project on ideology. The essay “Work and Its Discontents” draws more on Dewey than Ruskin.
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Olsen, Marvin. 1974. Review Symposium. American Journal of Sociology 80.1 (July): 236–241.
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In reviewing The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (Bell 1999, cited under Selected Major Works), Olsen argues that Bell fails to answer the question, “What is the working class in post-industrial society?” Class conflict disappears from the analysis, as do links between labor and democratic participation.
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Waters, Malcolm. 1996. Daniel Bell. London: Routledge.
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Another balanced exegesis of Bell, with judicious criticisms of his treatment of capitalism and social class.
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Education
Bell’s interest in education flowed from two sources: his theories of post-industrial society, where knowledge and intellectuals played a critical role (Bell 1999, cited under Selected Major Works); and his involvement in the liberal arts curriculum at a time of social change, intellectual specialization, and student unrest (Bell 1966). (See also Selected Major Works.) The concerns were primarily with higher education and the university, with very limited reference to secondary education. Bell 1969 offers a rather critical postscript on the student radicalism of 1968. Waters 1996 is less impressed with Bell’s work on education than what he sees as the core work on relations between economy and society, while Trow 1968 is far more positive of the freestanding value of Bell’s thinking on education.
Bell, Daniel. 1966. The reforming of general education: The Columbia College experience in its National Setting. New York: Columbia Univ. Press.
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In a new introduction to the 2011 Transaction Books reprint of this work, Bell writes briefly about why the reforms he proposed were not adopted. His view that the volume still represents a landmark in understanding the rationale and history of general university education in the United States has not been challenged.
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Bell, Daniel. 1969. Columbia and the New Left. In Confrontation: The student rebellion and the universities. Edited by Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol, 67–107. New York: Basic Books.
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This work is controversial for its cursory dismissal of the student radicalism that erupted at Columbia two years later, seen simply as “romanticism soured by rancor and impotence” (p. 106).
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Trow, Martin. 1968. Bell, book and Berkeley. American Behavioral Scientist 11.5 (May/June): 43–48.
DOI: 10.1177/000276426801100508Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A generally positive evaluation of Bell’s book that combines general principles with practical suggestions for reform, though Trow notes Bell’s lack of awareness of educational research on the impact of higher education on students.
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Waters, Malcolm. 1996. Daniel Bell. London: Routledge.
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Sees Bell’s contribution as an interesting “excursion” rather than an intentional expansion into a new field of inquiry. Major themes like the disjunction between economy and culture underlie Bell’s interest in the promotion of a reformed liberal arts curriculum to challenge both utilitarianism and what he saw as the destructive nihilism of radical student politics.
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Other Dimensions of Social Change
Bell’s essayistic approach to intellectual work means that many interesting ideas are scattered across a range of publications other than the three key books. Bell 1991b is interesting for foreshadowing issues taken up more recently in the study of globalization. Bell 1987 is a characteristic short essay of epistemological and substantive interest. Bell 1991a offers new insights into the persistence of ethnicity, while Bell 1991b marks an earlier contribution to debates around globalization and the nation-state. Bell 1992 presents interesting comments on the fragmentation of intellectual life, while Bell 2002 considers sociological thought in France.
Bell, Daniel. 1987. The world and the United States in 2013. Daedalus 116.3 (Summer): 1–31.
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Bell asks how far one can predict the future. He also suggests some structural changes and policy challenges likely to be characteristic of the world in 2013, with remarkable prescience.
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Bell, Daniel. 1991a. Ethnicity and social change. In The winding passage: Sociological essays and journeys. By Daniel Bell, 184–229. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
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This essay, first published in 1975, contributes to the revival of sociological interest in ethnicity as an active social force rather than a traditional form of identity that is withering away.
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Bell, Daniel. 1991b. The future world disorder: The structural context of crises. In The winding passage: Sociological essays and journeys. By Daniel Bell, 210–227. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
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This essay first published in 1977 prefigures more recent debates on social change in an epoch of globalization, dealing in particular with the relationships between changing global processes and the nation-state.
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Bell, Daniel. 1992. The cultural wars: American intellectual life, 1965–92. The Wilson Quarterly 16.3 (Summer): 74–107.
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Argues that American intellectual life no longer has a center, as universities and periodicals are divided by cultural conflict. Intellectual culture is fragmented into “research,” “policy analysis,” and various currents of “theory.”
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Bell, Daniel. 2002. Dominique Schnapper and the community of citizens. Society 40.1 (November/December): 98–102.
DOI: 10.1007/BF02802975Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Reflections of the development of sociology in France across three generations. Written for the occasion of the presentation of the International Balzan Foundation Prize in 2002 to Dominique Schnapper.
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