Richard Sennett

Richard Sennett (2010)

Richard Sennett (born Chicago, 1 January 1943) is the Centennial Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and University Professor of the Humanities at New York University. Sennett is probably best known for his studies of social ties in cities, and the effects of urban living on individuals in the modern world.

He has been a Fellow of The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of the Royal Society of Literature. He is the founding director of the New York Institute for the Humanities. In 2006 Sennett was the winner of the Hegel Prize awarded by the German city of Stuttgart, and in 2008 was awarded the Gerda Henkel Prize, worth 100,000 Euros, by the Gerda Henkel Foundation of Düsseldorf, Germany.

He is married to sociologist Saskia Sassen.

Biography

Richard Sennett grew up in the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago, coming from a family of Russian emigres. As a child he trained in music, studying the cello and conducting, working with Claus Adam of the Juilliard String Quartet and the conductor Pierre Monteux. When a hand injury put an end to his musical career, he entered academic life. He trained with David Riesman, Erik Erikson, and Oscar Handlin at Harvard, graduating with his Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization in 1969. His intellectual life as an urbanist came into focus during the time he spent as a fellow of the Joint Center for Urban Studies of Harvard and MIT.

Mr. Sennett's scholarly writing centers on the development of cities, the nature of work in modern society, and the sociology of culture. Families Against the City, his earliest book, examines the relation between family and work in 19th Century Chicago. A subsequent quartet of books explores urban life more largely: The Uses of Disorder, an essay about identity formation in cities; The Fall of Public Man, a history of public culture and public space, particularly in London, Paris, and New York in the 18th and 19th Centuries; The Conscience of the Eye, a study of how Renaissance urban design passed into modern city planning, and Flesh and Stone, an overview of the design of cities from ancient to modern times.

Another quartet of books is devoted to labor. The Hidden Injuries of Class is a study of class consciousness among working-class families in Boston; The Corrosion of Character explores how new forms of work are changing people's communal and personal experience; Respect probes the relation of work and reforms of the welfare system. The Culture of the New Capitalism provides an overview of these changes. Authority is an essay in political theory; it addresses the tools of interpretation by which people recast raw power into either legitimate or illegitimate authority.

Sennett currently is working on a project called 'Homo Faber,' exploring material ways of making culture. The first book in this series is The Craftsman, published in 2008; subsequent volumes are Together: The Rituals, Pleasures, and Politics of Cooperation, published in 2012, and a future volume on the making of the urban environment.

In the public realm, Sennett founded, and directed for a decade, the New York Institute of the Humanities at New York University. Sennett then chaired a United Nations commission on urban development and design. As president of the American Council on Work, Sennett led a forum, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, for researchers trying to understand the changing pattern of American labor. Most recently he helped create, and has chaired, the Cities Programme at the London School of Economics. In 2006 he served as Chair of the jury of the Venice Biennale.

Sennett's literary "hobby" is writing about music, including novels with musical themes.

Selected works

• Together: The Rituals, Pleasures, and Politics of Cooperation, Yale (2012), ISBN 0300116330
• The Foreigner: Two Essays on Exile, Notting Hill (2011), ISBN 1907903089
• The Craftsman, Allen Lane (2008), ISBN 978-0713998733
• The Culture of the New Capitalism, Yale (2006), ISBN 0300119925
• Respect in a World of Inequality, Penguin (2003), ISBN 0393325377
• The Corrosion of Character, The Personal Consequences Of Work In the New Capitalism, Norton (1998), ISBN 0393319873
• Flesh and Stone: The Body And The City In Western Civilization, Norton (1994), ISBN 0393313913
• The Conscience of the Eye: The design and social life of cities, Faber and Faber (1991), ISBN 0393308782
• Authority (1980), ISBN 0571161898
• The Fall of Public Man, Knopf (1977), ISBN 0141007575
• The Hidden Injuries of Class, with Jonathan Cobb, Knopf (1972), ISBN 039331085X
• The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity & City Life (1970), ISBN 0393309096
• Families Against the City: Middle Class Homes of Industrial Chicago, 1872-1890, Harvard (1970), ISBN 067429226X
• Classic Essays On The Culture Of Cities, editor (1969), ISBN 013135194X
• Nineteenth Century Cities: Essays In The New Urban History, coauthor, Yale (1969)

Fiction

• Palais-Royal (1986), ISBN 0393312518
• An Evening of Brahms (1984)
• The Frog Who Dared to Croak (1982), ISBN 0374158843

External links

• Official website
• LSE faculty profile
• Guardian: Richard Sennett
• Article (09/2005)
• Article (02/2001)
• Interview (01/2006)
• BBC (01/2006)
• Guantánamo in Germany (with Saskia Sassen) in The Guardian, 21 August 2007 (concerning arrest of German sociologist charged of being "mastermind" of the Militante gruppe)
• Discussion on Craft and skills
• NewYork Times Book Review (April 6, 2008)
• Audio: Richard Sennett in conversation on the BBC World Service discussion show The Forum