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

The downside of our brave new world of flexibility, innovation, and risk. 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, sociologist Richard Sennett explores the disorienting effects of the new capitalism. Old ways of work have broken apart, as has the work ethic of an older generation. In place of stable routine and predictable career tracks, employees are asked to be open to change on short notice. Staid bureaucracies have become more fluid networks; short-term teamwork replaces long-term commitment to organizations. In some ways these changes are positive. They make for a dynamic economy. But they can also be destructive, eroding the sense of sustained purpose, integrity of self, and trust in others that an earlier generation understood as essential to personal character. In The Corrosion of Character, Sennett helps us to understand the social and political context for these personal confusions, and suggests how we need to reimagine both community and individual character in order to confront an economy based on the principle of "no long term."