Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
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It is not difficult to pick holes in a conception that has been open to scrutiny
for well over a generation. Little social science lasts even a decade, so Daniel
Bell’s continuing to set the terms for such an important debate is an enviable
achievement. It is testament to Bell’s powerful imagination and intellect that still
now any serious attempt to conceptualise the ‘information age’ must go back to
his The Coming of Post-Industrial Society. The book is indeed an academic tour
de force. Krishan Kumar (1978), Bell’s sharpest critic, concedes this when he
describes the theory of post-industrialisation as ‘intellectually bolder and tougher
by far than anything else . . . in the literature of futurology’ (p. 7). There were
other social scientists in the 1960s commenting on the direction of change, and
a good many of these placed emphases on the role of expertise, technology and
knowledge in looking into the future. None, however, presented such a systematic
or substantial account as did Bell. Further, Bell’s theory of post-industrialism
was the first attempt to come to grips with information and the developing information
technologies, and this pioneering effort established principles which still
retain force (cf. Touraine, 1971). Finally, it must be appreciated that Daniel Bell
is a thinker of the very first rank (Jumonville, 1991; Liebowitz, 1985; Waters,
1996). He is the author of numerous highly impressive and influential works, from
The End of Ideology (1961) and the seminal Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism
(1976) to The Coming of Post-Industrial Society itself.
To appreciate Daniel Bell I think it is also necessary to know something
about his intellectual style, his concerns and the historical context within which
his work was produced. First, while he does indubitably produce a theory of postindustrial
society, Daniel Bell is not an armchair theorist in the sense of being a
constructor of unworldly models. On the contrary, Bell’s approach is as one
intensely engaged with the real world, one who seeks to theorise – i.e. to produce
generalisable statements – on the basis of close analysis of what is actually going
on. In this way his theory and substantive analyses are intimately tied. One ought
not to be surprised about this. Bell’s background and being have made him
passionately concerned about understanding the world, the better to change it.
The son of Polish immigrants, born in poverty in the Lower East Side of New
York City, Bell (1991) was politically engaged from his early teens. Later on he
was a journalist covering labour affairs before taking a position at Columbia
University and developing into one of the most influential of the so-called ‘New
York intellectuals’ (Bloom, 1986). Such characteristics do not fit with a narrow
scholastic career; though he did achieve a chair at Harvard University, Bell has
not sat easily within professional Sociology. His doctorate, essential for academic
positions in the USA and intended as evidence of technical accomplishment, was
scarcely orthodox, being based on bundled essays he published as The End of
Ideology. Moreover, the questions he addresses are too big and unwieldy, too
capacious and ambitious, to allow for the meticulously designed research investigations
so much approved of by the professional mainstream. It is clear that
Bell is technically not the most accomplished of Sociologists, preferring references
to the Bible and Shakespeare to the contingency tests on survey data. He
has been a prolific writer, but most of his publications have been outside the
mainstream. Instead of the refereed journal, Bell’s favoured publications were
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