The corrosion of character: The personal consequences of work in the new capitalism

Résumé du document

The text we have is extracted from a book written by Richard Sennett in 1998 about new capitalism and its consequences on work and on personal lives. In this extract we have two chapters of the book.

The first chapter, called "Drift", is based on a true story of a family to show that things have considerably changed between two generations (a father and his son). Compared to his father Enrico, the son Rico fulfilled his dreams but he rejected the way he was educated by his father. Indeed, in order to succeed his social mobility, Rico had to open to the world, to be less communitarian than his father. Rico enjoyed the American Dream and learnt new values such as risk, freedom and ambition. And he succeeded in business, even if he often had to change of jobs.

But he still fears to lose control of the situation and finds it is difficult to have his own firm is such economic environment. His wife also has problems to organize work because of its separation into many places. Both of them fear because they do not know the good way to act in such uncertain economy. This work uncertainty has a lot of impacts on the way people behave in their private life. For instance, Rico explains this causes high pressure in his family and with all the work he has to do, he feels that he sometimes neglects his children.

Extraits

[...] The corrosion of character: The personal consequences of work in the new capitalism The text we have is extracted from a book written by Richard Sennett in 1998 about new capitalism and its consequences on work and on personal lives. In this extract we have two chapters of the book. The first chapter, called is based on a true story of a family to show that things have considerably changed between two generations father and his son). Compared to his father Enrico, the son Rico fulfilled his dreams but he rejected the way he was educated by his father. [...]

[...] In my opinion, this corrosion of character and all the negative consequences work have on private life do not mean that our epoch is worse than the previous ones. I think that people are going to get used to combining stressing experiences at work on one side and eased personal life on the other side, with ethical education and plans for future in spite of the increasing uncertainty. References Sennett, Richard The Corrosion of Character?The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism. New York: W. W. [...]

[...] Both of them fear because they do not know the good way to act in such uncertain economy. This work uncertainty has a lot of impacts on the way people behave in their private life. For instance, Rico explains this causes high pressure in his family and with all the work he has to do, he feels that he sometimes neglects his children. The place of work is nowadays central and it becomes really complicated to separate personal life from professional one. [...]

[...] Today, the conception of routine that remained is Smith's one: the negative one. He considered that routine “deadens the spirit” and that it becomes “self-destructive”. Indeed, according to Smith, it creates stupidity and ignorance. Routine also damages character and that is why it is necessary to break out with routine (Marx agreed with Smith about that). With other way of organizing work, such as Fordism and Taylorism, the negative side of routine remained and was sometimes made worse by a higher pressure at work (e.g. [...]

[...] One of them is that to compare two generations, Sennett only uses one example he knows. Even if this example is particularly relevant because it is quite general, it would have been rewarding to illustrate his thesis with other examples. For instance people who were not from immigrant families because it is maybe one of the explanations to Enrico's communitarianism One of the other aspects that may be criticized is the fact that he only speaks about the American society and generalizes to critique new capitalism. [...]