To reread to Daniel Bell. Forty years after the publication of The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism

Authors

  • Jorge Ramírez Plascencia Centro Universitario de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades (CUCSH) at the Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico. ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8511-0158 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8511-0158
  • Héctor Raúl Solís Gadea Centro Universitario de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades (CUCSH) at the Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico. ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5337-6667 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5337-6667

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.32870/espiral.v24i68.5741

Keywords:

capitalism, Daniel Bell, modernism, cultural contradictions, social theory.

Abstract

The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, published by Daniel Bell in 1976, exercised a visible influence on the intellectual debates of those years and it has maintained a relatively constant presence in sociological literature. Bell argued mainly that culture had radically changed in a direction that made it incompatible with the reproduction of the capitalist economy. Forty years after the appearance of the book, in this article we seek to assess the consistency of this thesis. The perspective is critic. We want to show its weaknesses revealing the misuse of Weber’s idea concerning the relationship between protestant ethic and development of capitalism, the shortcomings of the theory of society built by Bell in order to settle the existence of contradictions and the adoption of concepts of culture and religion restrictives.

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Author Biographies

Jorge Ramírez Plascencia, Centro Universitario de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades (CUCSH) at the Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico. ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8511-0158

Professor-Researcher at the Centro Universitario de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades (CUCSH) at the Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico.

Héctor Raúl Solís Gadea, Centro Universitario de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades (CUCSH) at the Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico. ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5337-6667

Professor-Researcher at the Centro Universitario de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades (CUCSH) at the Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico.

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Published

2016-11-18

How to Cite

Plascencia, J. R., & Solís Gadea, H. R. (2016). To reread to Daniel Bell. Forty years after the publication of The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. Espiral Estudios Sobre Estado Y Sociedad (eISSN: 2594-021X), 24(68), 9-35. https://doi.org/10.32870/espiral.v24i68.5741