Sennet's Corrosion of Character

A detailed Summary of Sennet's Corrosion of Character

In The Corrosion of Character, Richard Sennett proposes that the emergence of "flexible capitalism" is having increasingly negative effects on the ability for people to find cohesion and narrative in their lives. The change from a pyramid bureaucracy to a web-like network removes the scaffolding that provided structure to earlier workers lives. With more frequent job relocation, travel and even less predictability in the work itself, people are having difficulty feeling that what they do each day is an accumulative experience, one that will lead them to new challenges and new levels of accomplishment, in a predictable order that would allow them to have closure and meaning in their lives. This lack of meaning creates characteristics and reactions that challenge our notions of happiness. In this review I will look at the various resources and ideas that Sennett calls upon to support his position and how well he administers them, as well as point out both positive and negative characteristics of his argument.

Sennett's use of individual examples serves well to bring us closer to the forces that effect people's lives. By using detailed qualitative life histories we are able to grossly but not unproductively reconstruct major

The Corrosion of Character stands as an interesting look into the life histories of those who have been negatively affected by "flexible capitalism" and offers thought provoking analysis. It acts as forewarning to the deprivation in character that a more cynical outlook may warrant against the rapid economic change that we are experiencing in America. But Sennett's argument lacks substantial weight in the practical workings of modern labor. The title of the book gives away the cynicism inherent in Sennett's argument, but he may have done better to consider the changes of character inherent in a changing labor structure more as growing pains than as an indication that the character of American workers is degraded by the system itself.

The last example that Sennett describes is of a group of computer analysts who have been affected by the downsizing trend in big business. The unique situation of this example is that the individuals find a degree of comfort in their comradery and mutual struggle to regain a stable livelihood. Although they express dissatisfactions with the decisions of the authoritative power that have pushed them out of the stable realm of work, they do come to confront the reality of their self-limitations. The lack of risk taking and foresight allowed for their paths of work life to be dictated for them, rather than taking proactive measures to ensure security themselves. This proactive risk taking has become the new relationship to success in response to the transformation of the pyramid into a web, and the groups of analysts comes to admit that their own roles played as much a part in their experience as did larger bureaucratic forces.

Another example that Sennett uses expresses another dimension in which the changing pace of work and lateral mobility in the network effects people trying to make a change from the self-dictated organization of life as a business owner into the network based work realm. Rose, who has owned a bar for several years, attempts to enhance her life by trying a new form of work. She gets a job with an advertising company and finds that because of her age she is not well accepted into this younger populated career. Because of her age she is treated unfairly within the interactions that her work consists of. One of the reasons that her age, and experience as a business owner play a part is that amidst a rapidly and constantly adjusting network, the younger workers accept change as an indigenous aspect of their work lives. They know that they must shift gears often and therefore base their critique of style on its short term potential to garner attention, utilizing new ideas in much quicker succession. Without this re

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Approximate Word count = 1817
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

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