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"Reflective, studded with sharp insights, moving with grace between big ideas and specific cases. This is vintage Sennett." Douglas W. Rae, author of City: Urbanism and Its End"
Madeleine Bunting, New Statesman, March 13 2006
'...packed with thought...profound and challanging... [I am] full of admiration for the subtlety and originality of Richard Sennett's work...'
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First Sentence
We best begin by giving some substance to the contrast between new and old, and at the very outset we are caught up short. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
We best begin by giving some substance to the contrast between new and old, and at the very outset we are caught up short. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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33 of 37 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
As a long-time admirer of Sennett's work, I expected that this book would develop Sennett's earlier analysis of advanced capitalism that he proposed in The Corrosion of Character and elsewhere. Undoubtedly, this book has some merits, notably Sennett's use of social capital theory and his trademark vignettes of highly revealing personal stories and anecdotes. The book, however is a disappointment. If anyone wanted to see that three lectures do not amount to a book, this is a good example. The lectures delivered at Yale must have been provocative and maybe even inspirational. They do not add up to a book, however. The fragmentation that Sennett observes in capitalist organizations characterizes much of his writing that is discontinuous and at times sloppy and lazy (and more spelling mistakes than one would expect of this publisher). At times, his vignettes lose their life-like qualities and appear formulaic or produced on demand (not unlike those of management gurus). Sennett's scholarship is also highly eclectic (not to say lazy) and far from up-to-date (really, is Goffman and Debord the best that can be done in the way of analysing the effects of today's consumer culture?) Sennett appears to ignore vast areas of contemporary social theory on bureaucracy, consumer studies and cultural studies that might have helped him provide a deeper, more coherent and better informed analysis. As an example, he seeks to argue that the implosion of bureaucracy has decimated 'institutional knowledge' on which organizations relied to function properly. He might have looked in the extensive work on knowledge management and narrative knowledge as used by communities of practice (including managers, consultants, professionals and people in general) to appreciate that institutional knowledge has merely assumed different forms.
Sadly this book does not live up to the promise or the achievement of Sennett's earlier works. If you want to see appreciate true sociological imagination, visit his earlier Hidden Injuries of Class and The Corrosion of Character.
21 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Sennett has done much to offer a critique of today's flexible capitalism. In this work he develops the themes that he identified earlier and observes once again fragmented lives, people who have lost the plot of their own existence and a devouring sense of purposelessness among those who pursue precarious porfolio careers. The book is sadly not up to his earlier work. The stories are cursory and have an almost artificial quality about them (compared to the vivid portraits that he offered in his earlier work). His engagement with contemporary scholarship is very casual and idiosyncratic (especially in his discussions of consumption where major contributions by Ritzer and others are ignored). Finally, the quality of production leaves much to be desired, with spelling mistakes - an obvious sign of the publisher's hurry to publish what were originally three lectures, with little attempt to turn them into a monograph.
29 of 34 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is a great little book that spills the beans on the latest forms of capitalism, including the corporate use of teams of consultants to do the dirty on employees and the current widespread corporate disrespect for both past experience and future stability. Wielding words like a surgeon's knife and writing with a clarity and ease of style that one does not normally associate with sociology, Sennett strips bare the pretensions of corporate asset-strippers and discloses how their ideology has infected public bodies as well as private companies. His definition of social capital is much more satisfying than those of some other theorists, suggesting as it does an intrinsic relationship between good will and employment, rather than simply exploiting philanthropic instincts to make up the deficit created by inadequate state services. This book is a wake-up call for those who care about the future, and a warning that our economies may be based at least as much on illusions intended to lure investment as on productive practices that will yield long-term profits and jobs. Short but sweet, and highly recommended. The game is up boys!
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