My article report was on Laurence
Veysey’s essay, “A Postmortem on Daniel Bell’s Post Industrialism.” For the most part, the structure of the essay
is analyzing and critiquing Daniel Bell’s work on post-industrialism. Daniel was a sociologist that wrote two books
on post-industrialism: The Coming of
Post-Industrial Society (1973) and The
Cultural Contraction of Capitalism (1976).
These books revolved around the idea that post-industrialism may be able
to explain recent social history.
Veysey constantly reiterates the fact that Bell is not clear cut in any
of his arguments. Veysey first displays
the difference between futurology and neo-conservatism and how they are tied
with post-industrialism. Futurology is
the “attempt self-consciously to study and predict the future”, and
neo-conservatism is a stance that defends capitalism. Veysey’s tone throughout the essay is quite
critical because it seems as if Bell goes back and forth with his arguments in
his books and poses many different assertions and questions regarding
post-industrial society. Bell poses a myriad of statements on this topic. First, he believes that self-fulfillment,
narcissism, and self exploration are the tendencies in American social life
currently and that technological inventions are slowing down. Second, he advocates for religion strictly
for sustaining social order. Third, he
predicts that the United States’ power in the world will have hit its peak by the
year 2000. Lastly, but not limited to,
Bell argues that the economy and culture are drastically moving in different
ways. According to Veysey, if you had to
sum up Bell in one sentence he would be “a socialist in economics, a liberal in
politics, and a conservative in culture.”
Like I said, this essay is not as
much explaining Bell’s work as it is criticizing Bell and his arguments. There were many reasons for Veysey’s dislike
of Bell. He criticizes Bell’s inability
to take a firm stance on an argument, inability to recognize the larger society
beyond the elite, and contradictory statements in regards to neo-conservatism,
post-industrialism, and American society.
Veysey does point out, however, that Bell is stimulating to read, even
though he strongly disagrees with him.
Veysey’s counterargument is that the idea of post-industrialism only can
be argued when relating it to the past not the future. For example, most of what Bell argued about
post-industrialism for the future ended up not coming true and the opposite
happened especially with the theory that the economy and culture in America
were going to widen severely. Veysey
coins the term, “age of affluence”, to argue his view on post industrialism and
how it can be used to comprehend human history in the middle of the twentieth
century. His “age of affluence” argument
basically summarizes how gradual movements into different historical movements
can be explained by long, wide-scale trends.
He classifies the new era of living as “the revolution of rising
expectations”.
This article was written at the
University of California, Santa Cruz in the Spring of 1982. It was published in the American Quarterly,
which includes essays engaging key issues in American Studies. Veysey died in 2004 and was a professor and
historian at UCSC. He was nominated for
multiple national book awards, and he is beloved at UCSC for his devotion to
bettering students and their education.
He retired to Hawaii and was 71 when he passed.
The intended audience for this
essay is definitely a more sophisticated, intellectual group of people who are adequately
informed about Post-Industrialism and the authors in its sector. Interestingly enough, other publications
arose around this time period criticizing Daniel Bell’s work. More critics shared similar concepts of
post-industrialism with Veysey rather than Bell. Because this was such a heavily argued topic
in the second half of the twentieth century, many people wrote on this topic
and even cited this exact essay. Some authors
included Howard Brick, Paul Forman, and Jefferson Pooley who also wrote in the
American Quarterly and published their own books. In my opinion, this essay was
interesting but intended for a much more informed audience that knew more about
the “era” and the study of post-industrialism.
Veysey posed many well-informed points, but his critique of Bell was
very one-sided, and he rarely agreed with Bell creating a sense of skepticism
as the reader.
 |
| One of many of Laurence Veysey's books |
 |
| Daniel Bell |
No comments:
Post a Comment