Editing Daniel Bell (section)

==Scholarship==
Bell is best known for his contributions to [[post-industrialism]]. His most influential books are, ''[[The End of Ideology]]'' (1960), ''The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism'' (1976),<ref name="contratimesreview">Williams, Raymond. [https://www.nytimes.com/1976/02/01/archives/how-can-we-sell-the-protestant-ethic-at-a-psychedelic-bazaar-the.html How can we sell the Protestant ethic at a psychedelic bazaar?: The Cultural Contradictions Of Capitalism (book review], ''[[The New York Times]]'', February 1, 1976</ref> and ''The Coming of Post-Industrial Society'' (1973).<ref>{{citation | last = Waters | first = Malcolm | contribution = Daniel Bell | editor-last = Ritzer | editor-first = George | editor-link = George Ritzer | title = The Blackwell companion to major contemporary social theorists | publisher = Blackwell | location = Malden, Massachusetts Oxford | year = 2003 | isbn = 978-1405105958 | quote = Waters identifies these as the "three works that made Bell famous" | postscript = .| title-link = The Blackwell Companion to Major Contemporary Social Theorists }} Also available as: {{Cite book | last = Waters | first = Malcolm | title = Chapter 6. Daniel Bell | pages = 154–177 | publisher = Wiley | date = 2003 | doi = 10.1002/9780470999912.ch7 | chapter = Daniel Bell | isbn = 978-0470999912 }} [http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9781405105958_chunk_g97814051059589 Extract.]</ref> Two of his books, the ''End of Ideology'' and the ''Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism'', were listed by the ''[[Times Literary Supplement]]'' as among the 100 most important books in the second half of the twentieth century. Besides Bell, only [[Isaiah Berlin]], [[Claude Lévi-Strauss]], [[Albert Camus]], [[George Orwell]], and [[Hannah Arendt]] had two books so listed.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20100619010636/http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article5418361.ece The hundred most influential books since the war], ''[[Times Literary Supplement]]'', December 30, 2008</ref>

===''The End of Ideology''===
In ''[[The End of Ideology]]'' (1960), Bell suggests that the older grand humanistic ideologies, derived from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, are exhausted and that new more parochial ideologies will soon arise. With the rise of affluent welfare states and institutionalized bargaining between different groups, Bell maintains, revolutionary movements that aim to overthrow liberal democracy will no longer be able to attract the working classes.<ref>Strand, Daniel. [http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A974844&dswid=-7623 No Alternatives: The End of Ideology in the 1950s and the Post-political World of the 1990s], pp. 140–145 (Stockholm University 2016) ({{ISBN|978-9176494837}})</ref>

===''The Coming of Post-Industrial Society''===
In ''The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting'' (1973), Bell outlined a new kind of society, the [[post-industrial society]]. He argued that post-industrialism would be [[information]]-led and [[Service (economics)|service]]-oriented. Bell also argued that the post-industrial society would replace the industrial society as the dominant system.

There are three components to a post-industrial society, according to Bell:
* a shift from manufacturing to services,
* the centrality of the new science-based industries,
* the rise of new technical elites and the advent of a new principle of stratification.

Bell also conceptually differentiates between three aspects of the post-industrial society: data, or information describing the empirical world; information, or the organization of that data into meaningful systems and patterns such as statistical analysis; and knowledge, which Bell conceptualizes as the use of information to make judgments. Bell discussed the manuscript of ''The Coming of Post-Industrial Society'' with [[Talcott Parsons]] before its publication.

===''The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism''===
In ''The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism'' (1976), Bell contends that the developments of twentieth-century capitalism have led to a contradiction between the cultural sphere of [[consumerism|consumerist]] instant self-gratification and the demand, in the economic sphere, for hard-working, productive individuals.<ref name="cult1">[[Eric Liu|Liu, Eric]]. [https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/09/how-boomers-left-us-with-an-ethical-deficit/63478/ How Boomers Left Us With an Ethical Deficit], ''[[The Atlantic]]'', September 24, 2010 ("When Daniel Bell wrote of the cultural contradictions of capitalism – that a self-denying work ethic leads to the affluence that gives rise to self-gratifying play ethic that ends up corroding the affluence – he could also have described the life cycle of the Boomers.")</ref> Bell articulates this through his "three realms" methodology, which divides modern society into the cultural, economic, and political spheres.

Bell's concern is that, with the growth of the welfare state throughout the post-war years, more and more of the population demand that the state fulfil the hedonistic desires which the cultural sphere encourages. That dovetails with the ongoing requirement for the state to maintain the kind of strong economic environment conducive to continual growth. For Bell, the competing, contradictory demands place excessive strain on the state that was manifest in the economic turbulence, fiscal pressure, and political upheaval characteristic of the 1970s.<ref name=gilbert_culture-crunch>{{cite journal|last=Gilbert|first=Andrew|title=The culture crunch: Daniel Bell's The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism|journal=[[Thesis Eleven]]|date=October 2013|volume=118|pages=83–95|doi=10.1177/0725513613500383|s2cid=143463159|url=http://the.sagepub.com/content/118/1/83.abstract|url-access=subscription}}</ref> Written at a time of significant shifts in U.S. politics, ''The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism'' offers reasons for the crisis of post-war liberalism.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Galbo|first=Joseph|title=From ''The Lonely Crowd'' to ''The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism'' and beyond: the shifting ground of liberal narratives|journal=[[Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences]]|date=Winter 2004|volume=40|issue=1 |pages=47–76|doi=10.1002/jhbs.10182|url=https://www.academia.edu/12779167}}</ref>