Search results for ""author richard sennett""

A provocative and disturbing look at the ways new economic facts are shaping our personal and social values. The distinguished sociologist Richard Sennett surveys major differences between earlier forms of industrial capitalism and the more global, more febrile, ever more mutable version of capitalism that is taking its place. He shows how these changes affect everyday life—how the work ethic is changing; how new beliefs about merit and talent displace old values of craftsmanship and achievement; how what Sennett calls the “specter of uselessness” haunts professionals as well as manual workers; how the boundary between consumption and politics is dissolving. Reformers of both private and public institutions have preached that flexible, global corporations provide a model of freedom for individuals, unlike the experience of fixed and static bureaucracies that Max Weber once called an “iron cage.” Sennett argues that, in banishing old ills, the new-economy model has created new social and emotional traumas. Only a certain kind of human being can prosper in unstable, fragmentary institutions: the culture of the new capitalism demands an ideal self oriented to the short term, focused on potential ability rather than accomplishment, willing to discount or abandon past experience. Sennett examines a more durable form of selfhood, and what practical initiatives could counter the pernicious effects of “reform.”

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An exploration of public performance in everyday life, by the leading cultural and social thinkerThe Performer explores the relations between performing in art (particularly music), politics and everyday experience. It focuses on the bodily and physical dimensions of performing, rather than on words. Richard Sennett is particularly attuned to the ways in which the rituals of ordinary life are performances.The book draws on history and sociology, and more personally on the author's early career as a professional cellist, as well as on his later work as a city planner and social thinker. It traces the evolution of performing spaces in the city; the emergence of actors, musicians, and dancers as independent artists; the inequality between performer and spectator; the uneasy relations between artistic creation and social and religious ritual; the uses and abuses of acting by politicians. The Janus-faced art of performing is both destructive and civilizing.This is the first in a trilogy of books on the fundamental DNA of human expression: performing, narrating, and imaging.

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Richard Sennett's The Fall of Public Man examines the growing imbalance between private and public experience, and asks what can bring us to reconnect with our communities. Are we now so self-absorbed that we take little interest in the world beyond our own lives? Or has public life left no place for individuals to participate? Tracing the changing nature of urban society from the eighteenth century to the world we now live in, and the decline of involvement in political life in recent decades, Richard Sennett discusses the causes of our social withdrawal. His landmark study of the imbalance of modern civilization provides a fascinating perspective on the relationship between public life and the cult of the individual. 'Brilliant ... One admires the breadth of Professor Sennett's erudition, the reach of his historical imagination, the doggedness of his analysis ... Buy this book and read it. Ironically, it may provide a key to happiness' Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times 'A powerful argument for a more formal public culture and a swipe against the rise of a self-indulgent counter-culture' Melissa Benn, Guardian 'A provocative book ... Sennett brings us to an undeniably recognizable place, the contemporary urban scene' Richard Todd, Atlantic Monthly Richard Sennett's previous books include The Fall of Public Man, The Corrosion of Character, Flesh and Stone and Respect. He was founder director of the New York Institute for the Humanities, and is now University Professor at New York University and Academic Governor and Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics.

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A sweeping, farsighted study of the changing nature of public culture and urban society, The Fall of Public Man spans more than two centuries of Western sociopolitical evolution and investigates the causes of our declining involvement in political life. Richard Sennett’s insights into the danger of the cult of individualism remain thoroughly relevant to our world today. In a new epilogue, he extends his analysis to the new “public” realm of social media, questioning how public culture has fared since the digital revolution.

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When first published in 1970, The Uses of Disorder, was a call to arms against the deadening hand of modernist urban planning upon the thriving chaotic city. Written in the aftermath of the 1968 student uprising in the US and Europe, it demands a reimagination of the city and how class, city life and identity combine. Too often, this leads to divisions, such as the middle class flight to the suburbs, leaving the inner cities in desperate straits. In response, Sennett offers an alternative image of a "dense, disorderly, overwhelming cities" that allow for change and the development of community. Fifty years later this book is as essential as it was when it first came out, and remains an inspiration to architects, planners and urban thinkers everywhere.

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Living with people who differ - racially, ethnically, religiously or economically - is one of the most urgent challenges facing civil society today. Together argues that co-operation needs more than good will: it is a craft that requires skill. In modern society traditional bonds are waning, and we must develop new forms of secular, civic ritual that make us more skilful in living with others. From Medieval guilds to today's social networks, Richard Sennett's visionary book explores the nature of co-operation, why it has become weak and how it can be strengthened.

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In 1970, Richard Sennett published the groundbreaking The Uses of Disorder, arguing that the ideal of a planned and ordered city was flawed. Fifty years later, Sennett returns to these still fertile ideas and, alongside campaigner and architect Pablo Sendra, sets out an agenda for the design and ethics of the Open City.The public spaces of our cities are under siege from planners, privatisation and increased surveillance. Our streets are becoming ever more lifeless and ordered. What is to be done? Can disorder be designed? In this provocative essay Sendra and Sennett propose a reorganisation of how we think and plan the social life of our cities. 'Infrastructures of disorder' combine architecture, politics, urban planning and activism in order to develop places that nurture rather than stifle, bring together rather than divide up, remain open to change rather than closed off.

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In The Corrosion of Character, Richard Sennett, "among the country's most distinguished thinkers . . . has concentrated into 176 pages a profoundly affecting argument" (Business Week) that draws on interviews with dismissed IBM executives, bakers, a bartender turned advertising executive, and many others to call into question the terms of our new economy. In his 1972 classic, The Hidden Injuries of Class (written with Jonathan Cobb), Sennett interviewed a man he called Enrico, a hardworking janitor whose life was structured by a union pay schedule and given meaning by his sacrifices for the future. In this new book-a #1 bestseller in Germany-Sennett explores the contemporary scene characterized by Enrico's son, Rico, whose life is more materially successful, yet whose work lacks long-term commitments or loyalties. Distinguished by Sennett's "combination of broad historical and literary learning and a reporter's willingness to walk into a store or factory [and] strike up a conversation" (New York Times Book Review), this book "challenges the reader to decide whether the flexibility of modern capitalism . . . is merely a fresh form of oppression" (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Praise for The Corrosion of Character: "A benchmark for our time."—Daniel Bell "[A]n incredibly insightful book."—William Julius Wilson "[A] remarkable synthesis of acute empirical observation and serious moral reflection."—Richard Rorty "[Sennett] offers abundant fresh insights . . . illuminated by his concern with people's struggle to give meaning to their lives."—[Memphis] Commercial Appeal

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'Thank god for Richard Sennett ... essential reading for all students of the city' Anna Minton, Prospect'Constantly stimulating ideas from a veteran of urban thinking' Jonathan Meades, GuardianIn Building and Dwelling, Richard Sennett distils a lifetime's thinking and practical experience to explore the relationship between the good built environment and the good life. He argues for, and describes in rich detail, the idea of an open city, one in which people learn to manage complexity. He shows how the design of cities can enrich or diminish the everyday experience of those who dwell in them.The book ranges widely - from London, Paris and Barcelona to Shanghai, Mumbai and Medellin in Colombia - and draws on classic thinkers such as Tocqueville, Heidegger, Max Weber, and Walter Benjamin. It also draws on Sennett's many decades as a practical planner himself, testing what works, what doesn't, and why. He shows what works ethically is often the most practical solution for cities' problems. This is a humane and thrilling book, which allows us to think freshly about how we live in cities.'Sennett is my kind of urbanist. He sees the modern city. He reads its secrets as he walks down the street, kicking over the detritus of the past ... There is no alternative to the planner, but please a planner who has read Sennett's book' Simon Jenkins, Sunday Times

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Provocative and enlightening, Richard Sennett's The Craftsman is an exploration of craftsmanship - the desire to do a job well for its own sake - as a template for living. Most of us have to work. But is work just a means to an end? In trying to make a living, have we lost touch with the idea of making things well? Pure competition, Sennett shows, will never produce good work. Instead, the values of the craftsman, whether in a Stradivari violin workshop or a modern laboratory, can enrich our lives and change the way we anchor ourselves in the world around us. The past lives of crafts and craftsmen show us ways of working - using tools, acquiring skills, thinking about materials - which provide rewarding alternative ways for people to utilise their talents. We need to recognize this if motivations are to be understood and lives made as fulfilling as possible. 'Lively, engaging and pertinent ... a lifetime's learning has gone into the writing of this book' Roger Scruton, Sunday Times 'An enchanting writer with important things to say' Fiona MacCarthy, Guardian 'Enthralling ... Sennett is keen to reconnect thinking with making, to revive the simple pleasure in the everyday object and the useful task. There is something here for all of us' Edwin Heathcote, Financial Times 'A masterpiece' Boyd Tonkin, Independent Richard Sennett's previous books include The Fall of Public Man, The Corrosion of Character, Flesh and Stone and Respect. He was founder director of the New York Institute for the Humanities, and is now University Professor at New York University and Academic Governor and Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics.

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Acosados por la privatización, la planificación urbanística obsesiva, la vigilancia policial y la especulación, los espacios que habitamos se vuelven cada vez más inhóspitos, recipientes cerrados que coartan la acción y limitan la experiencia vibrante que constituía la riqueza humana de las grandes ciudades.Cincuenta años después de la publicación de su clásico Los usos del desorden, en el que Richard Sennett alertó por primera vez sobre los efectos nocivos que la proyección de modelos preconcebidos y rígidos sobre el entorno urbano tenía sobre aquellos a los que pretendían cobijar, Sennett vuelve junto con Pablo Sendra a las tesis que guiaron este título fundamental: a saber, que la idea de un espacio urbano ordenado y planificado constituía una trampa que llevaba en su seno la semilla de la corrupción de la vida de las ciudades, y que la existencia de una ciertaforma de desorden era un requisito ineludible para la gestación de una ciudadanía crítica y emancipada.A tr

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Rethinking the open cityPlanners, privatisation, and police surveillance are laying siege to urban public spaces. The streets are becoming ever more regimented as life and character are sapped from our cities. What is to be done? Is it possible to maintain the public realm as a flexible space that adapts over time? Can disorder be designed? Fifty years ago, Richard Sennett wrote his groundbreaking work The Uses of Disorder, arguing that the ideal of a planned and ordered city was flawed, likely to produce a fragile, restrictive urban environment. The need for the Open City, the alternative, is now more urgent that ever. In this provocative essay, Pablo Sendra and Richard Sennett propose a reorganisation of how we think and plan the life of our cities. What the authors call 'infrastructures for disorder' combine architecture, politics, urban planning and activism in order to develop places that nurture rather than stifle, bring together rather than divide,

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Emile Durkheim's On Suicide (1897) was a groundbreaking book in the field of sociology. Traditionally, suicide was thought to be a matter of purely individual despair but Durkheim recognized that the phenomenon had a social dimension. He believed that if anything can explain how individuals relate to society, then it is suicide: Why does it happen? What goes wrong? Why do certain social, religious or racial groups have higher incidences of suicide than others? As Durkheim explored these questions he became convinced that abnormally high or low levels of social integration lead to an increased likelihood of suicide. On Suicide was the result of his extensive research. Divided into three parts - individual reasons for suicide, social forms of suicide and the relation of suicide to society as a whole - Durkheim's revelations have fascinated, challenged and informed readers for over a century.

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Thomas Struth is one of the best-known photographers to come out of the school of Bernd and Hilla Becher. In this celebrated volume, Struth presents a series of urban streetscapes from cities such as Edinburgh, Lima, Pyongyang, Naples, and New York City, all taken in similar conditions—devoid of human activity. Struth refers to these mundane buildings, unpopulated streets and anonymous facades as “unconscious places”—environments that are imbued with meaning only by the viewer. Captured with exquisite technical prowess and presented with powerful, restrained neutrality, Struth’s images allow us to fully appreciate a city’s character—from its telephone wires above to the pavement below. Renowned sociologist Richard Sennett’s illuminating essay reveals how Struth’s sober, lucid photography leads the viewer to create their own conclusions, rather than forcing a perspective. The resulting interplay among photographer, viewer, and landscape may hold the key to understanding how architecture affects our daily lives.

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In this reissue of the 1972 classic of social anatomy, Richard Sennets adds a new introduction to shows how the injuries of class persist into the 21st century. In this intrepid, groundbreaking book, Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb uncover and define a new form of class conflict in America?an internal conflict in the heart and mind of the blue-collar worker who measures his own value against those lives and occupations to which our society gives a special premium.The authors conclude that in the games of hierarchical respect, no class can emerge the victor; and that true egalitarianism can be achieved only by rediscovering diverse concepts of human dignity. Examining personal feelings in terms of a totality of human relations, and looking beyond the struggle for economic survival, The Hidden Injuries of Class takes an important step forward in the sociological critique of everyday life.

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Treating cities as laboratories of the modern world, “Infrastructures of the Urban” examines how they are made and how they should be remade. The contributors—scholars and practitioners from architects and sociologists to physicists—bring to bear empirical analysis, ethnography, eyewitness reflections, cultural critique, and manifestos to explore how improving our material and cultural infrastructure can produce a better society.The authors’ interest in urban experience is ethical as well as scholarly. Topics include the World Trade Center memorial, the planning of the London Olympics, the informal redesign of shanty housing by slum residents in Mumbai and Mozambique, and the more formalized construction of highways and “tech-cities” like Sondgu, South Korea. The contributors show how cities are made and remade daily, as well as how the diverse, unexpected agents involved in the process break down the distinction between experts and laypeople. The essays do not merely examine cities at a theoretical or dispassionate distance but recommend normative values for how cities should evolve to address new social challenges.Contributors: Ash Amin, Michael Arad, Richard Burdett, Craig Calhoun, Nerea Calvillo, Naresh Fernandes, Gerald Frug, Orit Halpern, Monika Krause, Jesse LeCavalier, Klaus Mainzer, Clapperton Mavhunga, Michael McQuarrie, Wolfgang Pietsch, Saskia Sassen, Richard Sennett, Harel Shapira, Cassim ShepardCraig Calhoun is Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of The Roots of Radicalism: Tradition, the Public Sphere, and Early Nineteenth-Century Social Movements. Richard Sennett is University Professor of Sociology and History at New York University. He is the author of Together: The Rituals, Pleasures, and Politics of Cooperation. Harel Shapira is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. He is the author of Waiting for José: The Minutemen’s Pursuit of America.

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In a book full of playful irony and striking insights, the controversial social philosopher Gilles Lipovetsky draws on the history of fashion to demonstrate that the modern cult of appearance and superficiality actually serves the common good. Focusing on clothing, bodily deportment, sex roles, sexual practices, and political rhetoric as forms of "fashion," Lipovetsky bounds across two thousand years of history, showing how the evolution of fashion from an upper-class privilege into a vehicle of popular expression closely follows the rise of democratic values. Whereas Tocqueville feared that mass culture would create passive citizens incapable of political reasoning, Lipovetsky argues that today's mass-produced fashion offers many choices, which in turn enable consumers to become complex individuals within a consolidated, democratically educated society. Superficiality fosters tolerance among different groups within a society, claims Lipovetsky. To analyze fashion's role in smoothing over social conflict, he abandons class analysis in favor of an inquiry into the symbolism of everyday life and the creation of ephemeral desire. Lipovetsky examines the malaise experienced by people who, because they can fulfill so many desires, lose their sense of identity. His conclusions raise disturbing questions about personal joy and anguish in modern democracy.

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People have always been interested in the cities in which they live. With the world‘s stark urbanization, the engagement of citizens to improve their urban environments is also growing. Far from the traditional urban planning culture, they make use of limited resources, offering solutions to face the challenges these cities offer. They focus on the provision of social infrastructure aiming to improve the living conditions of the residents at the local scale. Handmade Urbanism showcases 15 projects realized mostly in less favored areas of five major cities in emerging countries, examining the potential of urban transformation embedded in community initiatives. What is the basis for such initiatives? Which are the instruments and tools they use? Illustrations depict their operational modes, reveal the actors involved and trace the steps they made in the organization of the initiatives. Interviews with experts, actors and different stakeholders clarify their meaning towards the local challenges. At a global level, common threads and differences are made clear. Handmade Urbanism drafts a possible urban vision of the city impacted by those processes and organizes a discussion that promotes participatory initiatives while exploring their potential to impact on the city at large – to the benefit of all. The publication includes the documentary "Urban Future", which provides the reader with further information from the ground.

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