I’ve been reading this book, Authority, by Richard Sennett, and consequently have found myself looking up information and articles by or about him in the hopes of coming across some juicy ideas.
Guardian UK: Inner-city scholar:
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But if he is rarely critical of individuals, he holds nothing back in his criticism of the new economy in which “to make it you really have to plunge into much more superficial social relations. It is dysfunctional to feel loyalty to an organisation. The notion of accumulating a life history with an institution or a person doesn’t work in this economy. The boom gave people the impression that the class divide was going to end – that there would be no losers. In fact, it has made it worse.”
He is currently overseeing a research project in New York which involves interviewing young people in their 20s, who have gone into financial services, IT and the new media. They are confused, he says: “Everyone thinks they are going to be the next Martha Lane Fox but they are learning very quickly that all these fantasy worlds just aren’t going to happen. Don’t commit, don’t be dependent, stay loose. Loyalty is very low on this list. But if you think dependence is bad, what you produce is a damaged human being.”
Ruth Levitas of the University of Bristol describes The Corrosion Of Character as a “wonderful description of the way in which insecure work has taken away the basics for a certain kind of character”. But she also thinks there’s something about the thesis “that doesn’t work in relation to women, something that’s not quite right. Ultimately, I felt the book doesn’t address gender”.
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Sennett knows this better than anyone. The Fall of Public Man was scathing about the way self-absorption kills off one’s ability to pay attention to others and function in the public realm. Sennett’s memoirs are not at all narcissistic in this way, but neither do they lend themselves to exploring the experiences of people on the receiving end of welfare. The argument, as a result, seems to become more abstract and abstracted the further it gets from Cabrini Green.
“Treating people with respect,” Sennett writes in his conclusion, “cannot occur simply by commanding it should happen. Mutual recognition has to be negotiated; this negotiation engages the complexities of personal character as much as social structure.” What exactly does this mean? The only moral Sennett is prepared to offer has to do with what he calls “the psychology of autonomy”, which involves “accepting in others what one does not understand”. By allowing of someone that you do not understand them, you grant them their dignity; by granting them their dignity, you thereby strengthen your own. It’s an ethical win-win.