American Capitalism: Social Thought and Political Economy in the Twentieth Century

In: Perspectives on political science, Band 37, Heft 1, S. 53-54

Abstract

C. Wright Mills, influenced by Max Weber, 'offered a radical critique of American society' in 'White Collar' and 'The Power Elite,' and 'became a hero to the New Left in the 1950s,' according to Daniel Geary (135), who also notes that Mills criticized his fellow sociologists for failure 'to consider total social structures' (141). James's enthusiasm for popular culture encouraged his followers 'to approach society from the bottom up, keeping their ears open for rumblings of alienation and resistance in popular consciousness, leaving no sphere of culture or society unexamined, an approach that helped to transform social history and cultural criticism' (174).