ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the social critics' general endeavor in order to suggest how their insights can augment other perspectives that are attuned primarily to individuals. While reviewing their work, the chapter indicates how it can be reframed as an important cultural artifact that betokens some of the same cultural developments displayed by bestselling novels. It then points out some problems inherent in some social thinkers' formulations of the task and method of sociocultural criticism. David Riesman, William H. Whyte, and C. Wright Mills interpreted the enormous economic expansion of the 1950s as the end of expansion because they feared the loss of entrepreneurial independence. Social critics like Riesman and Whyte used the concept of the peer group to add theoretical complexity to their descriptions of modern society. They thought the model of a sharp dichotomy between powerless masses and manipulative organizations inaccurate.
