The Corrosion of Character

The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism

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by Richard Sennett

W. W. Norton and Co.

Due/Published October 1998, 192 pages, cloth

ISBN 0393046788

Drawing on interviews with dismissed IBM executives in Westchester, New York, bakers in a high-tech Boston bakery, a barmaid turned advertising executive, and many others, Sennett explores the disorienting effects of the new capitalism. He reveals the vivid and illuminating contrast between two worlds of work: the vanished world of rigid, hierarchical organizations, where what mattered was a sense of personal character, and the brave new world of corporate re-engineering, risk, flexibility, networking, and short-term teamwork, where what matters is being able to reinvent yourself on a dime. In this timely and essential essay, Sennett enables us to understand the social and political context for our contemporary confusions, and he suggests how we need to re-imagine both community and individual character in order to confront an economy based on the principle of 'no long-term.'