The Coming of the Postindustrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting

This predictive and substantiated statement provided a solid framework against which contemporary understandings of late modernity can still be tested.

Bell’s "venture" touches upon a series of issues that remain important for understanding current socio-economic change and the insecurity that comes with it. One of the reasons why Bell’s work is still important is its remarkable insight regarding the gap between systems of beliefs and values and the fundamental parameters of socioeconomic organisation, stratification and sociality.

The links between such parameters may seem today more obvious than when Bell wrote but it is undoubtedly easier to identify these links after having read his work. Some of Bell’s predictions are still open to questioning but the transition that he foresaw is certainly taking place along many of the lines that he described, mainly for the American society.

It is in many ways right to suggest that Bell’s venture has been an extraordinary success.

Bell D.,The Coming of the Postindustrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting, Basic Books, New York, 1973.