David Riesman was a sociologist, attorney

Lawyer

A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...

, and educator.

After graduating from Harvard Law School

Harvard Law School

Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...

, where he was a member of the Harvard Law Review

Harvard Law Review

The Harvard Law Review is a journal of legal scholarship published by an independent student group at Harvard Law School.-Overview:According to the 2008 Journal Citation Reports, the Review is the most cited law review and has the second-highest impact factor in the category "law" after the...

, Riesman clerked

Law clerk

A law clerk or a judicial clerk is a person who provides assistance to a judge in researching issues before the court and in writing opinions. Law clerks are not court clerks or courtroom deputies, who are administrative staff for the court. Most law clerks are recent law school graduates who...

 for Supreme Court

Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...

 Justice Louis Brandeis

Louis Brandeis

Louis Dembitz Brandeis ; November 13, 1856 – October 5, 1941) was an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1916 to 1939.He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Jewish immigrant parents who raised him in a secular mode...

 from 1935-1936. He also taught at the University of Buffalo Law School.

The Lonely Crowd

Riesman's 1950 book, The Lonely Crowd

The Lonely Crowd

The Lonely Crowd is a 1950 sociological analysis by David Riesman, Nathan Glazer, and Reuel Denney. It is considered—along with White Collar: The American Middle Classes, written by Riesman's friend and colleague C. Wright Mills -- to be a landmark study of American character.-Description:Riesman,...

, a sociological

Sociology

Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...

 study of modern conformity

Conformity

Conformity is the process by which an individual's attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors are influenced by other people.Conformity may also refer to:*Conformity: A Tale, a novel by Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna...

, which postulates the existence of the "inner-directed" and "other-directed" personalities. Riesman argues that the character of post-WWII 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. This lifestyle has a coercive effect, which compels people to abandon "inner-direction" of their lives, and induces them to take on the goals, ideology, likes, and dislikes of their community. Ironically, this creates a tightly grouped crowd of people that is yet incapable of truly fulfilling each other's desire for companionship. The book is considered a landmark study of American character. Riesman was a major public intellectual as well as a sociologist, representing an early example of what sociologists now call "public sociology."

American higher education

In addition to his many other publications, Riesman was also a noted commentator on American higher education, publishing, with his seminal work, The Academic Revolution co-written with Christopher Jencks. In The Academic Revolution Riesman sums up his position by stating, "If this book has any single message it is that the academic profession increasingly determines the character of undergraduate education in America." In a painstaking and historically thorough treatment of landmark changes in 20th-century American higher education, Riesman repeatedly highlights the effects of the "logic of the research university", which focuses upon strict disciplinary research. This internal logic both sets the goals of the research university and produces its future professors. Riesman noted this isolated any patterns of resistance that might challenge the university's primary purpose as disciplinary research, dashing their chances of success.

Further reading

• Galbo, Joseph. "From the lonely crowd to the cultural contradictions of capitalism and beyond: The shifting ground of liberal narratives," Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, Winter 2004, Vol. 40 Issue 1, pp 47-76