Book Description
In this provocative book Richard Sennett looks at the ways today’s global, ever-mutable form of capitalism is affecting our lives. He analyzes how changes in work ethic, in our attitudes toward merit and talent, and in public and private institutions have all contributed to what he terms “the specter of uselessness,” and he concludes with suggestions to counter this disturbing new culture.
“Hardly any social thinkers have given serious thought to the drastic changes in corporate culture wrought by downsizing, ‘re-orging,’ and outsourcing. Fortunately, the exception—Richard Sennett—is also one of the most insightful public intellectuals we have. In The Culture of the New Capitalism Sennett addresses the new corporate culture with his usual vast erudition, endlessly supple intellect, and firm moral outlook. The result is brilliant, disturbing, and absolutely necessary reading.”—Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
“[Sennett] has brilliantly pushed his thinking. . . . [A] triumph.”—Will Hutton, The Observer
“Reflective, studded with sharp insights, moving with grace between big ideas and specific cases. This is vintage Sennett.”—Douglas W. Rae, author of City: Urbanism and Its End
“Packed with thought. . . . Profound and challenging. . . . [I am] full of admiration for the subtlety and originality of Richard Sennett’s work.”—Madeleine Bunting, New Statesman
Customer Reviews:
Mysteries of Corporate Mayhem Revealed!.......2006-11-27
Richard Sennett in THE CULTURE OF THE NEW CAPITALISM reflects upon the reactionary extirpation over the past three decades of the Western social capitalist state. Starting with a discussion of Bismarckian social capitalism which was founded on the model of the Prussian Army's highly successful bureaucracy and which provided structure and discipline to cultural relations, Sennett ends with a bleak meditation on the values encoded in the New Economy versus the Old. These include the elevation of process over craftsmanship, of "flexibility" over stability, of superficial over deep knowledge, and of centralized power over mediated authority. Along the way, Sennett shares pithy insights into the nature of this revolutionary shift and the cultural and economic dislocations it has caused.
Sennett states that three new pages were turned in the late twentieth century workplace. "First has been the shift from managerial to shareholder power in large companies." (pg. 37) This shift in power, according to Sennett turned a second new page: "The empowered investors wanted short-term rather than long-term results." The third new page representing a challenge to the past "lay in the development of new technologies of communication and manufacturing." He notes that "one consequence of the information revolution has...been to replace modulation and interpretation of commands by a new kind of centralization." (pg. 43) At the same time, automation, growing out of technological innovation "...has affected the [social capitalist] bureaucratic pyramid in one profound way: the base of the pyramid no longer needs to be big." (pg. 43). Circuits replace people.
According to Sennett, the old model, built on the pyramid model with a mass of workers at the bottom responding to a chain of command situated at the top is on the way out. In contrast, the new model he likens to an MP3 player: "The MP3 machine can be programmed to play only a few bands from its repertoire; similarly, the flexible organization can select and perform only a few of its many possible functions at any given time. In the old-style corporation, by contrast, production occurs via a fixed set of acts; the links in the chain are set. Again in an MP3 player, what you hear can be programmed in any sequence. In a flexible organization, the sequence of production can be varied at will." (pgs.47-48). (Notably, and perhaps inevitably, the new model got its start in the cutting edge businesses of finance, technology, pharma and media and their support industries: marketing research, advertising, and business consulting).
In a remarkable section on the shift in how employees are assessed - based on achievement in the old structure and "potential" in the new -- he shows how SAT testing supports the new regime. Sennett notes that "in the search to consummate the project of finding a [Jeffersonian] natural aristocracy, the mental life of human beings has assumed a surface and narrowed form. Social reference, sensate reasoning, and emotional understanding have been excluded from that search, just as have belief and truth. ...These [flexible] institutions ... privilege the kind of mental life embodied by consultants, moving from scene to scene, problem to problem, team to team. He says that "...this talent search cuts reference to experience and the chains of circumstance, eschews sensate impressions, divides analyzing from believing, ignores the glue of emotional attachment, penalizes digging deep--the state of living in pure process which the philosopher Zygmunt Bauman calls 'liquid modernity.'" (pgs. 120-122)
He notes that while citizen-workers might have been trapped in Max Weber's "iron cage" under the old system, nevertheless the structure gave its denizens a sense of meaning and was roughly consonant with general social values. In essence, Sennett says: "Time lay at the center of this military, social capitalism: long-term and incremental and above all predictable time." (pg. 23).
This new architecture, crafted by the business consultant class to whom agency is given by the new corporation, enables the exercise of enormous centralized power through new communications technology, and at the same time evades the responsibility of its recommendations, as do those who hire them. Bloodless terms like "flexible" workplaces," "off-shoring" and "right-shoring," "downsizing" and "right-sizing" are, for instance, deployed to mystify mass firings and those responsible for them.
The ideal worker in this paradigm is conceived to be flexible, cooperative, efficient and not get too involved in the nuts and bolts when doing problem-solving. Want ads looking for "entrepreneurs," and "self-starters" are emblematic of this shift. The ideal worker is most of all attuned to short-term shareholder values, values which insist on change. Whether the change is good or bad is almost irrelevant: change is in and of itself a signal to investors of impending short-term gains.
Sennett offers "five ways in which the consumer-spectator-citizen is turned away from progressive politics," each element of which arises from the culture of the new capitalism. He says that the consumer-spectator-citizen is "(1) offered political platforms which resemble product platforms and (2) gold-plated difference; (3) asked to discount 'the twisted timber of humanity (as Immanuel Kant called us), and (4) credit more user-friendly politics; (5) accept continually new political products on offer."(pg. 163). Summarizing these points, he says: "The culture of the new capitalism is attuned to singular events, one-off transactions, interventions; to progress, a polity needs to draw on sustained relationships and accumulate experience. In short, the unprogressive drift of the new culture lies in its shaping of time." (pg. 178).
In his last paragraph, Sennett attempts to end on a hopeful note: "What I have sought to explore in these pages is thus a paradox: a new order of power gained through and ever more superficial culture. Since people can anchor themselves in life only by trying to do something well for its own sake, the triumph of superficiality at work, in schools, and in politics seems to me fragile. Perhaps indeed, revolt against this enfeebled culture will constitute our next fresh page."
I don't know about you, but I'm not holding my breath.
Working in the New Economy.......2006-05-09
As a member of the New Left in the 1960's, Richard Sennett was a young radical railing against big corporations and big government. He was also critical of state socialism for being just another bureaucratic system holding the individual in its suffocating grip. That was then, now the bureaucracies have been delayered and flattened out. It's management by email.
As the old saw goes: Be careful what you ask for. In "The Culture of New Capitalism," Sennett seems somewhat nostalgic for the security and rewarding work that bureaucracies once provided. The dismantling of large-scale institutions did not result in the communities of trust and solidarity for which the radicals had hoped. Instead, they left modern day workers in very fragmented and ambiguous working conditions.
According to Sennett, these conditions came about in the 1970's and have accelerated since. After the breakdown of the Bretton Woods agreement, capital markets became globalized. Corporate managers became more concerned about increasing short term value - higher share price - and less concerned about the long-term welfare of their employees. Over the years wages have stagnated and benefits have been reduced. In short, "the new capitalism" or "new economy" of which he speaks has been reconfigured to give an increasing amount of wealth to shareholders rather than employees.
What effect this has had on the workplace is the focus of this study. The target industries of this study were high technology, finance, and media, but what has taken place there foreshadows what is happening in other industries and also the public sector.
First, Sennett finds that employees must learn how to manage short-term relationships; corporations no longer provide a long-term framework. Second, the modern workplace values a meritocracy of potential abilities rather than craftsmanship developed over a long period of time. And finally, one must learn how to let go of the past and accept the fact that one's place in the corporation is no longer guaranteed. To sum up, the ideal worker in the new economy is someone who must think in the short term, constantly develop their potential and not look over their shoulder.
That's great if you are young, unattached, wealthy, and well educated. However, if you are middle-class, middle-aged, and have multiple responsiblities, it's a cruel world.
For nearly a generation, globalization has brought downward pressure on unskilled wages, but now - thanks to technological innovations - it is bringing downward pressure on skilled wages as well. Never before has capitalism had unlimited access to labor. There has been a race to the bottom in search of lower wages.
Americans seem to have resigned themselves to the vicissitudes of the global labor markets; the Europeans and the Japanese have been less sanguine, or a least more protective of their lifestyles. It may be that Americans believe free markets are an intrinsic good. I believe that at some point there will be a backlash against outsourcing and offshoring, and that this book may be prescient. As Sennett rightly notes, free markets do not necessarily translate into more freedom for individuals.
Average customer rating:
|
Culture, Capitalism, and Democracy in the New America
Richard Harvey Brown
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 Labor & Industrial Relations
| Economics
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Americas
| History
| Subjects
| Books
| Canada
| Caribbean & West Indies
| Central America
| General
| Greenland
| Mexico
| Native American
| South America
| United States
Postmodernism
| Movements & Periods
| History & Criticism
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Current Events
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
Democracy
| Government
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Politics
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
Labor & Industrial Relations
| Politics
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
Cultural
| Anthropology
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
Culture
| Sociology
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
All Titles
| Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007
| Stores
| Books
ASIN: 0300100256 |
Book Description
The United States is in transit from an industrial to a postindustrial society, from a modern to postmodern culture, and from a national to a global economy. In this book Richard Harvey Brown asks how we can distinguish the uniquely American elements of these changes from more global influences. His answer focuses on the ways in which economic imperatives give shape to the shifting experience of being American.
Drawing on a wide knowledge of American history and literature, the latest social science, and contemporary social issues, Brown investigates continuity and change in American race relations, politics, religion, conception of selfhood, families, and the arts. He paints a vivid picture of contemporary America, showing how postmodernism is perceived and felt by individuals and focusing attention on the strengths and limitations of American democracy.
Customer Reviews:
Rehabilitating the Puritans.......2001-01-01
The first reviewer for the work gives an admirable and accurate summary of its main theses, so I will cut to the chase and begin my critique. I am one of the undergraduates who had the good fortune to actually read this book for Innes' course in Colonial American history at U.Va. As such, my opinion of the book may be skewed by the context in which I read it. In the book, Innes makes an admirable effort in making the Puritans understandable to the modern reader. He cogently outlines the foundational ethic of Puritans and how its internal paradoxes fostered constant striving for social justice and economic prosperity. The book is useful in dispelling much of the fairy tale images of early American history that popular culture feeds us. Readers shouldn't fear the word "economic" in the subtitle; the text is dense but not inaccessible. Nevertheless, the book IS an undergraduate level textbook, and it is rather substantial. I recommend it only for the reader with a real passion for the subject matter.
Creating the Commonwealth.......2000-05-05
Innes argues that the economic success of the Massachusetts Bay Colony was due to the Puritans creation of a society in which capitalism, community, and civil society were connected. The Protestant work ethic, which was taught in the household, pulpit, meetinghouse, and assembly, instructed that God provided every man with a calling and it was his duty to work hard at it. This religious-based work ethic coupled with the belief that profit taking was fine as long as the profits were used to help others (the linking of individual and collective well-being) encouraged the development, within the community, of an individual-based capitalism. These two beliefs endorsed "striving" behavior and enterprise which led to the growth of the economy.
Average customer rating:
|
Hypercapitalism: New Media, Language, And Social Perceptions of Value (Digital Formations)
Phil Graham
Manufacturer: Peter Lang Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Policy & Current Events
| Popular Economics
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Free Enterprise
| Economics
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Popular Culture
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
Media Studies
| Mass Media
| Current Events
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Performing Arts
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
Social Aspects
| Technology
| Science
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0820462179 |
Book Description
Every day trillions of dollars circulate the globe in a digital data space and new forms of property and ownership emerge. Massive corporate entities with a global reach are formed and disappear with breathtaking speed, making and breaking personal fortunes the size of which defy imagination. Fictitious commodities abound. The genomes of entire nations have become corporately owned. Relationships have become the overt basis of economic wealth and political power. Hypercapitalism explores the problems of understanding this emergent form of global political economic organization by focusing on the internal relations between language, new media networks, and social perceptions of value. Taking an historical approach informed by Marx, Phil Graham draws upon writings in political economy, media studies, sociolinguistics, anthropology, and critical social science to understand the development, roots, and trajectory of the global system in which every possible aspect of human existence, including imagined futures, has become a commodity form.
Book Description
In the winter of 1972, the first issue of Ms. magazine hit the newsstands. For some activists in the women's movement, the birth of this new publication heralded feminism's coming of age; for others, it signaled the capitulation of the women's movement to crass commercialism. But whatever its critical reception, Ms. quickly gained national success, selling out its first issue in only eight days and becoming a popular icon of the women's movement almost immediately.
Amy Erdman Farrell traces the history of Ms. from its pathbreaking origins in 1972 to its final commercial issue in 1989. Drawing on interviews with former editors, archival materials, and the text of Ms. itself, she examines the magazine's efforts to forge an oppositional politics within the context of commercial culture.
While its status as a feminist and mass media magazine gave Ms. the power to move in circles unavailable to smaller, more radical feminist periodicals, it also created competing and conflicting pressures, says Farrell. She examines the complicated decisions made by the Ms. staff as they negotiated the multiple—frequently incompatible—demands of advertisers, readers, and the various and changing constituencies of the feminist movement.
An engrossing and objective account, Yours in Sisterhood illuminates the significant yet difficult connections between commercial culture and social movements. It reveals a complex, often contradictory magazine that was a major force in the contemporary feminist movement.
Customer Reviews:
Elegant analysis of timely topic.......1998-10-01
This is a wonderful book providing a fresh perspective on the history of this all important magazine. Farrell lucidly analyzes the tensions that this publication faced as it became the most recognized publication to emerge out of the feminist movement in the United States over the past 30 years. She coins the term "popular feminism" in this book to describe what Ms. set out to accomplish. She uses this term seriously and addresses its implications with care, neither condemning the magazine or its publishers for seeking a mass audience, nor naively celebrating Ms. as a "true" mouthpiece of women everywhere. On the contrary, her text reveals the complexity of this idea: the difficult, and ultimately impossible, negotiations between commercial and social interests that the magazine attempted to negotiate, the possibilities created by a mass media periodical that addressed its audiences as political subjects, and the claim that readers made to make the magazine their own. Farrell's brilliant account of the history of Ms. comes at an important time as the publication has recently hit hard times. Some have argued that the magazine serves no useful purpose anymore, even that feminism is dead. After reading Farrell's book, it is clear to me that neither is true, and that both Ms. and feminism are involved in complex cultural dialogues and are continually evolving.
Average customer rating:
|
Civilizing Capitalism: The National Consumers' League, Women's Activism, and Labor Standards in the New Deal Era (Gender and American Culture)
Landon R. Y. Storrs
Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Women
| Specific Groups
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
Labor Policy
| Popular Economics
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Popular Economics
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Workplace
| Organizational Behavior
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Economic History
| Economics
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Labor & Industrial Relations
| Economics
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Depression
| 20th Century
| United States
| Americas
| History
| Subjects
| Books
General
| 20th Century
| United States
| Americas
| History
| Subjects
| Books
General
| United States
| Americas
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Social History
| Historical Study
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Labor & Industrial Relations
| Politics
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Sociology
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
Federal Government
| Levels of Government
| Political Science
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Women's Studies
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
History
| Women's Studies
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
All Titles
| Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007
| Stores
| Books
Biographies & Memoirs
| Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007
| Stores
| Books
Business & Investing
| Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007
| Stores
| Books
Nonfiction
| Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007
| Stores
| Books
ASIN: 0807848387
Release Date: 2000-03-29 |
Book Description
Offering fresh insights into the history of labor policy, the New Deal, feminism, and southern politics, Landon Storrs examines the New Deal era of the National Consumers' League, one of the most influential reform organizations of the early twentieth century.
Founded in 1899 by affluent women concerned about the exploitation of women wage earners, the National Consumers' League used a strategy of "ethical consumption" to spark a successful movement for state laws to reduce hours and establish minimum wages for women. During the Great Depression, it campaigned to raise labor standards in the unregulated, non-union South, hoping to discourage the relocation of manufacturers to the region because of cheaper labor and to break the downward spiral of labor standards nationwide. Promoting regulation of men's labor as well as women's, the league shaped the National Recovery Administration codes and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 but still battled the National Woman's Party, whose proposed equal rights amendment threatened sex-based labor laws.
Using the National Consumers' League as a window on the nation's evolving reform tradition, Civilizing Capitalism explores what progressive feminists hoped for from the New Deal and why, despite significant victories, they ultimately were disappointed.
Book Description
Written by one of the most distinguished experts on China's economic and business history, China and Capitalism provides a highly original yet clear and readable approach to the development of business in China from 1500 to the 1990s that sheds new light on the strengths and weaknesses of Chinese business today. The book is written to be accessible to people with little background in China or Chinese business practice.
Book Description
The emergence of the joint-stock company in nineteenth-century Britain was a culture shock for many Victorians. Though the home of the industrial revolution, the nation's economy was dominated by the private partnership, seen as the most efficient as well as the most ethical form of business organisation. The large, impersonal company and the rampant speculation it was thought to encourage were viewed with suspicion and downright hostility. This book argues that the existing historiography understates society's resistance to joint-stock enterprise, employing an eclectic range of sources, from newspapers and parliamentary papers to cartoons, novels and plays, to unearth this forgotten economic debate. It explores how the legal system was gradually restructured to facilitate joint-stock enterprise, a process culminating in the limited liability legislation of the mid-1850s. This has typically been interpreted as evidence for the emergence of new, positive attitudes to speculation and economic growth, but the book demonstrates how traditional outlooks continued to influence legislation, and the way in which economic reforms were driven by political agendas. It shows how debates on the economic culture of nineteenth-century Britain are strikingly relevant to current questions over the ethics of multinational corporations. JAMES TAYLOR is Lecturer in British History at Lancaster University.
Average customer rating:
|
Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia (The New Rich in Asia Series)
M. Pinches
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Economic Conditions
| Economics
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
International
| Economics
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Non-US Legal Systems
| Perspectives on Law
| Law
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Politics
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
Relations
| International
| Politics
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Sociology
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
Culture
| Sociology
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
Ethnic Studies
| Special Groups
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0415197643 |
Book Description
Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia shows that the cultural reconfiguration of domestic and international relations around Asia's new rich has often been characterized by tension and division, and by an elevated status for the new rich themselves and the societies in which they live and work.
In this latest volume in the New Rich in Asia Series the authors examine the cultural reconfiguration, consumer behavior, economic success and cultural status of the new rich. The book includes case studies from Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, India and China that challenge the narrow political-economic and cultural-determinist approaches that have so far dominated the literature on capitalist development in Asia.
Average customer rating:
|
Cultural Capitalism: Politics After New Labour
Manufacturer: Lawrence And Wishart Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General
| Politics
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
History & Theory
| Politics
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
Ideologies
| Politics
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
| Communism & Socialism
| Radical Thought
General
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Sociology
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
Culture
| Sociology
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
History of the State
| Political Science
| Social Sciences
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0853159173 |
Book Description
Since culture is the mediator between the individual and society, it is not surprising that it is a crucial part of politics. This is recognised by New Labour. Chris Smith, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, in a speech soon after the 1997 Labour election victory, stated that "Culture is what gives us a sense of identity both as individuals and as a nation." He argued that culture lies at the very heart of the mission of the new government
This book presents a series of differing inflections of the relationship between politics and culture. The editors argue that it is crucial to analyse the culture of New Labour; but also that any politics in the age of "the triumph of capitalism" needs to be informed by cultural theory.
Books:
- The Economic Institutions of Capitalism
- The Economic Way of Thinking (10th Edition)
- The Fair Tax Book: Saying Goodbye to the Income Tax and the IRS
- The Great Transformation
- The Greatest Miracle in the World
- The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action
- The Laws of Thinking: 20 Secrets to Using the Divine Power of Your Mind to Manifest Prosperity
- The Master Swing Trader: Tools and Techniques to Profit from Outstanding Short-Term Trading Opportunities
- The pH Miracle: Balance Your Diet, Reclaim Your Health
- The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Dover Value Editions)
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- History: Fiction or Science
- Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home: And Other Unexplained Powers of Animals
- Translation and Globalization
- Understanding Interest Rate Swaps
- A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900
- Cost Accounting
- Burden of Dreams: History and Identity in Post-Soviet Ukraine
- Fixed Income Markets and Their Derivatives
- Wealth Management: The Financial Advisor's Guide to Investing and Managing Your Client's Assets
- A Brace of Bloodhounds
The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism
The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business
A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America
The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991
The Fall of Public Man (Open Market Edition)
