The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism

A great read, although a bit dated -- I hadn't realized when I ordered this that it was a 20-year old book. So rather than being a look at how the world of work is now, it really shows how it began, where loyalty, commitment, longevity and pride in being a part of something eroded. As the author says, "The qualities of good work are not the qualities of good character." And nothing much has changed for the worker in America since the book was published. "No long term commitment" is the norm now, on both sides, rather than just a few companies' way of doing business. "Flexible employment" often means no set schedules, no definite hours. So rather than a means to "work / life balance", workers have to keep their entire 24 hours open, with no set schedule, and little advance notice. Technology has reduced many trades to "button-pushing", as he uses the example of bakers in the book. Computer skills, or the ability to push the right button at the right time, has become more important than actually knowing how to create the product. It's a bit heavy on old studies and stats, but the author provides human examples to back them up.

I am struck by the visceral and reactive comments in some of the reviews, but this only demonstrates that Sennett has touched a vulnerable nerve among those who have a vested interest in the juggernaut of globalization and commercial frenzy of the Internet. Isn't it interesting that the most volatile reviews come from those in the heart of Silicon Valley? Sennett has succeeeded in illuminating the universal in the particular, yes, through what his critics denigrates as "just anecdotes"? But anecdotes are grounded in human experience, not rarefied abstractions of traditional positivist sociology. His critics ought to go back to read C. Wright Mills' classic The Sociological Imagination, who takes these posivist parasites to task. Sennett also does a stellar job of stripping away the corporate speak and propaganda about "change, teams, reengineering" --the stuff that has made management gurus and their parrot of consultant-followers rich, while the ordinary Joe is the mere anecdotal recipient of such social engineering schemes. Sennett also succeeds in showing how the superficiality of corporate life is bleeding over to the family, eroding away depth and character..this is a sore spot that most managers would rather ignore. As C. Wright Mills, the great sociologist taught, "the political task of the sociologist...is to translate personal troubles into public issues, and public issues into the terms of their human meaning for a variety of indivdiuals" The public isn't moved by barren statistics, it is moved by real stories of real human beings.

Sennett's evocation of the nature of work in postmodern capitalism is spot-on in recognizing and explaining the alienating factors at play in a de-centered, job-based not career-based working world. In fact the book, a long essay, was in places hard to read because he evoked some memories of my own encounters with this world. It was harder to read also knowing that the research and the ideas driving the work were in place during the time of writing. Much has changed in ways that only amplify the alienation felt by workers. If, as Sennett claims, that the breakdown of the corporate structure is bad news psychologically for the worker -- where there is no clear antagonist in the workplace -- then the alienation is exponentially more evident in a world with ten percent unemployment. This essay was true when he was writing and the US economy was creating over a million jobs a year. The issues he explores are only more true now.

Sennett grapples here with serious and deep problems in modern American culture and economy, but does not really get a grip on them. Given that he sees the problems, but doesn't really offer new thoughts on their causal structures or solutions, too much of the book deteriorates into repetitious whining. Should have been an essay, not stretched into a book.

Written in a very relatable manner, it poses questions to modern developments and how human these are. It gives very good and developed insights into these. for myself as a product designer/innovator and teacher, these are very valid and meaningful questions, I highly recommend it.

Very insightful long essay. Contains many interesting thoughts - I wonder what Sennett makes of the period after this book first appeared?

A great read, teaches you to look at everything differently. Not only does it reveal its arguments within a few pages and in a succinct manner, each page requires you to pause and think about the points made. It does this in such a way that makes the reader a scholar and not a stubborn debater.

Despite the title it is a must read to understand the shift in management strategy and how is the current "leader" culture (instead of the boss culture) mostly benefit your leaders and not you.

I only recently turned to this book when doing my own research on the impact of technological change on individuals. Sennett is something of a revelation: an American prepared to deal seriously with the abuses of Anglo-American capitalism whilst retaining a sober tone and realistic outlook. He draws on a broad range of ideas, and applies them through the stories of the workers and citizens he encounters, producing some sparkling ethnography and a deep and humiliating critique of the modern workplace and its failure to fulfil our needs as a shaper of character.For increasingly hysterical American capitalists, the arguments in this book will be insufficient to inhibit them from their beggar-thy-neighbour approach to business, justified by the twisted moral logic that grants them an obligation at work to extort as much profit as possible from others regardless of social or personal cost. But we can see in hindsight what ignoring Sennett's warnings have come to mean. An American middle-class, those technical specialists and problem-solving types that used to carry out the plans of elite managers, have seen their jobs (and thus their identities) vanish as a result of the greed of capital, and not yet replaced by some other means of constructing character. Sennett poses some serious questions about the sense of taking this approach, and the human cost of it, that have been thoroughly ignored.This is a prescient book, written in the late nineties and prefiguring the social crises we have today, themselves the result of an economic crisis provoked by the absence of moral and ethical conduct amongst the economic elite. That there might finally be a reckoning (the Occupy movement being a first sign), fits with Sennett's assessment that this only happens at the point where the personal experience of the many can be aggregated. For Western capitalism, we need to confront our failures, and Sennett saw this long before most of us.

Excellent book. The presentation offers a good framework for understanding the general discontent of middle and working classes today. Methodical and rigorous. Highly recommended.

Sennett sees de-industrialisation from the 1980's onwards as having a negative affect on workers lives and provides case studies along with theory. Another short but easily readable text that is ideal for undergraduate studies in social sciences, but makes easy but thoughtful general reading. Recommended. Needs to be read along with Giddens or similar for an alternative view.

Well worth reading

very happy