See also: Beautiful

Daniel Bell is a Sociologue and Essayiste American born on May 10th, 1919 in New York (the United States). Currently professor emeritus at the university of Harvard (faculty of Arts and Letters), it taught sociology at the University of Columbia. Its many books and articles, in particular in the reviews Public The Interest , Fortune and The New Leader , make of it a major figure of the American sociology of the post-war period.

Work

Daniel Bell is, with French Alain Touraine, at the origin of the sociological current Post-industrialiste. Manuel Manors house will also define Bell and Touraine as the fathers of the informationalism, which he regards as the sociological Paradigme dominating since the middle of the years 1990.

It is in its most known work, the test of social Prospective Towards the post-industrial company (1973), that Daniel Bell exposes his vision of the company of the year 2000. What it conceives like a preponderance incipient from immaterial elements (knowledge and information) in the organization sociétale makes him conclude with a going beyond from the industrial Paradigme. This vision had been started in the end of the ideologies (1960), or the sociologist announced the advent of a broad explainable ideological consensus by the going beyond of the material priorities. One can thus see in the work of Beautiful a will of déconstruction of historical materialism. However its third major work, cultural contradictions of capitalism (1976), develops an appreciably different point of view of, the sociologist worrying about the spectacular projections of the consumer society.

Taking into account the academic context of after Second world war and passion inébranlable of Daniel Bell for sociology, one can regard this author as having contributed to the confirmation of his discipline to the row of science. Some saw it like conservative and technocrat, others like a precursory utopian of the culture Hippie. Beautiful always claimed to describe sociétaux principles and their operation without being concerned with political conclusions.

Its work today is studied and its books were not republished in French. For as much, its determining influence on sociologists like Anthony Giddens, Ulrich Beck or Manuel Manors house is largely recognized.