Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 16:43:20 -0700 From: Patrick Crosby <pcrosby-AT-ieee.org> Subject: Re: NY Times article on Riesman Extremely interesting link. In it, Patterson not only gives a nice capsule summary of Reisman's career, but points to some very troubling voids in the American cultural scene, and some even more troubling ways in which these voids, created by the abandonment of academic social thinkers, are being fulfilled by the likes of Limbaugh, Schlessinger (a.k.a. Dr Laura), Oprah, and the rest. Among "the rest," as I have here categorically lumped them, is one of a particularly troubling figure who I have been exploring lately: novelist and self proclaimed "philosopher" Ayn Rand (whose first name correctly pronounced, if anyone cares, rhymes with "lion"). In keeping with the title of her most popular novel, I am finding Rand to be a largely unacknowledged fountainhead of the direction the thinking of the masses has taken in the last three decades. Perhaps what we have here, in effect, is "the Spirit of Capitalism" rearing it's ugly head in a most unexpected way: the "market" abandoned by academic social thinkers is now being filled by third-rate novelists, charismatic TV personalities, and Ph.D. physiologists masquerading as licensed clinical psychologists. This set of circumstances ought to be particularly troubling to today's academic social thinkers. I have heard several accounts of the parents of undergraduate students with technical and biological majors asking their sons' and daughters' sociology professors questions like, "what are you wasting my son's time with stuff like this for?" The trend Patterson describes makes questions such as this all the more difficult to answer. George Free wrote: > There's an article in the Op-Ed page of the New York Times on the late > David Riesman that may be of interest to members of this list > > http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/19/opinion/19PATT.html > > free registration required. > > ********************************************************************** > Contributions: bourdieu-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu > Commands: majordomo-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu > Requests: bourdieu-approval-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ********************************************************************** Contributions: bourdieu-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu Commands: majordomo-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu Requests: bourdieu-approval-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
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