Sachgebiete

Beschreibung:

XI; 185 S.; 8°; kart.

Bemerkung:

Gutes Ex.; Einband etwas berieben. - New power elites and social classes, student revolts, cultural fragmentation-evidences of current inequity and unrest in the United States, France, Germany, and Britain-are set in historical and sociological perspective in Mr. Birnbaum's investigation of the postwar crisis of the Western industrial nations. In three trenchant essays the author calls for a re-evaluation of some of the most commonly accepted ideas of class, power, and culture. Contemporary in its emphasis and cosmopolitan in its approach, the book draws concrete examples from the American experience as well as that of many of the nations of Europe. Mr. Birnbaum distinguishes between the schematic treatment of class systems and their actual development in history and society. He argues that the mass of the people are no nearer political control than a century ago, and he weighs potentialities for the rise of a new and humanistic industrial culture. Applying to extant situations such sociological concepts as alienation, bureaucratization, and generational conflict, he explores the role of the unions and the intelligentsia in industrial society and the position of women; technology's effects upon political attitudes, and the possibilities of radicalizing the new middle class. He regards the student revolt, and particularly that of May 1968 in Paris, as highly significant: "The May Revolution was a temporary union of those who refused the 'consumer society' (a phrase much used in those days) and those who did not consume enough. The absurdity and inhumanity of a society organized precisely about this difference obsessed the participants. The barricades erected by the Parisian students had symbolic value for an entire generation." Norman Birnbaum is Professor of Sociology at Amherst College, and the author of Sociology and Religion (with Gertrude Lenzer), and The Sociological Analysis of Ideology, 1940-1960. From 1952 to 1966 he lived in Europe, where he studied in Germany, taught at Oxford University, the University of Strasbourg, and the London School of Economics and Political Science, and helped to launch The New Left Review. (Verlagstext)