...THIS AUTHOR
26. January 2012
Richard Sennett writes about cities, labor, and culture. He teaches sociology at New York University and at the London School of Economics.
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY
Richard Sennett has explored how individuals and groups make social and cultural
sense of material facts -- about the cities in which they live and about the labour
they do. He focuses on how people can become competent interpreters of their own
experience, despite the obstacles society may put in their way. His research entails
ethnography, history, and social theory. As a social analyst, Mr. Sennett continues the pragmatist tradition begun by
William James and John Dewey.
His first book, The Uses of Disorder, [1970] looked at how personal identity
takes form in the modern city. He then studied how working-class identities are
shaped in modern society, in The Hidden Injuries of Class, written with Jonathan
Cobb. [1972] A study of the public realm of cities, The Fall of Public Man, appeared
in 1977; at the end of this decade of writing, Mr. Sennett sought to account the
philosophic implications of this work in Authority [1980].
At this point he took a break from sociology, composing three novels: The Frog
who Dared to Croak [1982], An Evening of Brahms [1984] and Palais Royal [1987].
He then returned to urban studies with two books, The Conscience of the Eye, [1990],
a work focusing on urban design, and Flesh and Stone [1992], a general historical
study of how bodily experience has been shaped by the evolution of cities.
In the mid 1990s, as the work-world of modern capitalism began to alter quickly
and radically, Mr. Sennett began a project charting its personal consequences
for workers, a project which has carried him up to the present day. The first
of these studies, The Corrosion of Character, [1998] is an ethnographic account
of how middle-level employees make sense of the “new economy.” The second in the
series, Respect in a World of Inequality, [2002} charts the effects of new ways
of working on the welfare state; a third, The Culture of the New Capitalism, [2006]
provides an over-view of change. Most recently, Mr. Sennett has explored more
positive aspects of labor in The Craftsman [2008], and in a study of cooperation
to appear in 2012.
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