Richard Sennett

The Corrosion of Character

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A Business Week Best Book of the Year…. “A devastating and wholly necessary book.”—Studs Terkel, author of Working

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
This book is currently unavailable
197 printed pages
Original publication
2011
Publication year
2011
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Quotes

  • Byunggyu Parkhas quoted4 months ago
    As a boy, I already knew, Rico had chafed under Enrico’s authority; he had told me then he felt smothered by the small-minded rules which governed the janitor’s life. Now that he is a father himself, the fear of a lack of ethical discipline haunts him, particularly the fear that his children will become “mall rats,” hanging out aimlessly in the parking lots of shopping centers in the afternoons while the parents remain out of touch at their offices.
    He therefore wants to set for his son and daughters an example of resolution and purpose, “but you can’t just tell kids to be like that” he has to set an example. The objective example he could set, his upward mobility, is something they take for granted, a history that belongs to a past not their own, a story which is over. But his deepest worry is that he cannot offer the substance of his work life as an example to his children of how they should conduct themselves ethically. The qualities of good work are not the qualities of good character.
  • Byunggyu Parkhas quoted4 months ago
    classic American suburb was a bedroom community; in the last generation a different kind of suburb has arisen, more economically independent of the urban core, but not really town or village either; a place springs into life with the wave of a developer’s wand, flourishes, and begins to decay all within a generation. Such communities are not empty of sociability or neighborliness, but no one in them becomes a long-term witness to another person’s life.
    The fugitive quality of friendship and local community form the background to the most important of Rico’s inner worries, his family. Like Enrico, Rico views work as his service to the family; unlike Enrico, Rico finds that the demands of the job interfere with achieving the end. At first I thought he was talking about the all too familiar conflict between work time and time for family. “We get home at seven, do dinner, try to find an hour for the kids’ homework, and then deal with our own paperwork.” When things get tough for months at a time in his consulting firm, “it’s like I don’t know who my kids are.”
  • Byunggyu Parkhas quoted4 months ago
    As I say, at first I was not prepared to shed many tears for this American Dream couple. Yet as dinner was served to Rico and me on our flight, and he began to talk more personally, my sympathies increased. His fear of losing control, it developed, went much deeper than worry about losing power in his job. He feared that the actions he needs to take and the way he has to live in order to survive in the modern economy have set his emotional, inner life adrift.
    Rico told me that he and Jeannette have made friends mostly with the people they see at work, and have lost many of these friendships during the moves of the last twelve years, “though we stay ‘netted.’” Rico looks to electronic communications for the sense of community which Enrico most enjoyed when he attended meetings of the janitors’ union, but the son finds communications on-line short and hurried. “It’s like with your kids—when you’re not there, all you get is news later.”

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