Richard Sennett
Richard Sennett ( born January 1, 1943 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American sociologist. The son of Russian immigrants teaches sociology and history at New York University and the London School of Economics and Political Science. His main research areas are cities, labor and cultural sociology. Sennett is married to the town sociologist Saskia Sassen.
Sennett was known as a theorist and historian of urban life. Its main themes are the isolation, confusion and powerlessness of modern individuals, the superficiality and instability of interpersonal relationships and the exercise of power. Especially in his early works he stays Chicago, the city of his childhood, and strongly tied to the experience gained in it. The high relevance of his themes and his catchy, essayistic style could advance his books bestsellers.
Sennett became famous with his book The Fall of public life (1977). In his work Crafts ( 2008) he demands to restore the intrinsic value of the individual work in contrast to the working conditions of financial capitalism and to make the working conditions for the people so that they strive to do their job as well as possible.
Life
Richard Sennett grew up in Cabrini Green, a poor neighborhood of Chicago, on. Both parents were convinced Communists. The father, whom he never met since it fled after Richard was born, fought in the Spanish civil war and set out later as a translator of Spanish and Catalan poems a name. His mother Dorothy earned as a social worker 's livelihood.
Sennett tried to climb the social ladder of this he later described as tight and menacing world first about the music. At a young age he learned the cello, composed and had success at public appearances. The study of musicology and the cello in New York, he had to give up in 1962 due to a failed operation on his left hand. He then studied with David Riesman and Erik Erikson in Chicago, then in Talcott Parsons at Harvard sociology and later history, including Hannah Arendt.
After receiving his doctorate in 1969, he taught and did research at Harvard, Yale, Rome and Washington. Since 1971 he is professor of history and sociology at New York University, where he from 1977 to 1984 the newly founded New York Institute for the Humanities launched. In 1999, a teaching as Centennial Professor of Social and Cultural Theory added at the London School of Economics.
Work
The flexible man
In his work The flexible man (The Corrosion of Character ), 1998, Sennett describes the impact of the new flexible capitalism on the character. Due to the flexibility of the labor market values and virtues lose their meaning: eg Loyalty, responsibility and work ethic as well as the ability to forgo immediate gratification of desires and pursue long-term goals. Reasons for this development are the acceleration of work organization, the ever-increasing performance requirements, the increasing insecurity of employment relationships and the need at any time to change the place of residence for employment purposes.
Also at the macro level Sennett stated a profound change. He examined after he has dealt with the history of industrial work, the transition from trained industrial capitalism, Fordism, to a system of flexible specialization. For example, the assembly line in a factory was replaced by specialized manufacturing and supplier companies to constantly adjust their location and workflows flexible to the needs of the globalized economy in the automotive industry. Strict hierarchies have been partially replaced by small, self-reliant groups ' high-risk. The pressure on the individual, which is also reflected in a changed understanding of the concept of time, increasing enormously. In addition, close monitoring of the entire production process - including workers - through the use of modern means of communication. In addition, Sennett describes a conflict between values that parents want to give their children and those that determine their professional life.
All this has helped give an atmosphere of fear, helplessness, instability and insecurity in many parts of society. This instability and uncertainty leave after Sennett an elbow society arise. The gap between rich and poor get bigger. The middle layers are thinned. There, a polarization between a small group of profiteers and a large number of losers of the new system was observed.
The culture of the new capitalism
The culture of the new capitalism ( The Culture of the New Capitalism ), 2005, the sequel to his bestseller The flexible man. Sennett it goes even care to have, as the new culture that emanates from the New Economy of the 1990s, leading to profound changes at the societal, organizational and individual level more. Since then exerts so Sennett, a global economic elite moral and normative influence on both the rest of the economy and in politics and the whole society.
The focus of his analysis on the effects of the "new capitalism " on the structure of large corporations and the requirements for workers. He notes an increasing similarity of consumer behavior and political action.
In the first chapter, Sennett describes the phase of "social capitalism ". In this phase, which lasted approximately from 1870 to 1970, adjusted companies more or less military organizations. The hierarchies and chains of command in these pyramid-shaped buildings were clear. The individual employee knew his place in this bureaucracy similar organization, but could not from this " iron cage " ( coined by Max Weber as " iron cage of servitude "; incorrectly translated by Talcott Parsons as the "iron cage" ) break out. At the time when these things began to look for new management methods, leverage and " impatient capital " to open and use new production technologies, heard the steel-hard casing to exist. In its place came to international trading companies with flat hierarchies, the one thing above all require their employees: flexibility.
Sennett then speaks of the arrival of the "mp3 - capitalism", the arbitrariness and speed have as a maxim. It 'll no longer matter so much that a person learns a craft and eventually mastered well. Rather, the New Capitalism requires the ability to constantly adapt to new circumstances.
The education system produces Sennett 's view, too many highly qualified potential workers. In fact, the economy could in fact work with a small elite, and the increasing automation. About 30 percent of the total work force of an industrialized country would be sufficient to maintain the economy. For the remaining 70 percent, therefore, provides a an awareness of their uselessness. The un - and under-employed part of the population that is marginalized in the culture of the new capitalism, according to Sennett would be remade by new employment, especially in the social field "profitable ". "Talent and the specter of uselessness " are the themes of the second chapter.
In the third chapter, Sennett shows how policy is both supply side and demand side to a business, a commodity. The politics business and its products ( choice programs, laws, decisions, etc.) are therefore imbued with the culture of the new capitalism. Again, it 's more about quick decisions as to information and detailed debate. Citizens will be policy - consumers. How brand products give themselves parties an image and make marketing to disguise basic interchangeability.
Writings
- Collaboration: What our society holds together, Berlin, 2012, ISBN 3-446-24035-7
- How I write: Sociology as Literature Rhema -Verlag, Münster ( 2009), ISBN 978-3-930454-93-8
- The Architecture of obsession in lecture: " Construction of the society. Architecture Lectures at ETH Zurich, No. 7 ". gta Verlag, Zurich, 2009, ISBN 978-3-85676-241-4
- Craft Berlin -Verlag, Berlin, 2008, ISBN 3-8270-0033-5 Review: Thomas Macho in NZZ 24 January, 2008
- German: . The culture of the new capitalism Berlin -Verlag, Berlin 2005 160 pages ISBN 3-8270-0600-7 ( This book is based on lectures given by the author as part of the Castle Lectures in Ethics, Politics, and Economics at Yale University in summer of 2004. )
- Reviews: Wolfgang Engler in the time and Robert Misik in the taz
- German: Respect in a World of Inequality, Berliner Taschenbuch -Verlag BAT, Berlin, 2004, ISBN 3-8333-0074-4
- Review: Herfried Münkler in Time 26 March, 1998.