Sennett, Richard - The New Capitalism

The New Capitalism Author(s): RICHARD SENNETT Reviewed work(s): Source: Social Research, Vol. 64, No.
2 (SUMMER 1997), pp. 161-180 Published by: The New School Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40971180 . Accessed: 09/01/2013 18:35
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The New Capitalism /
BY RICHARD SENNETT
1 he word newis a suspectword,the favoredadjectiveof Yet in the last twenty advertisers. yearsprofound changesin material lifehaveoccurred, changesthata scoreof yearsago it was hard to foresee. bureaucracies Then, the greatcorporate and government hierarchies of the developedworldseemed the productsof centuries of economic entrenched, securely and Commentators development nation-building. spoke of "late capitalism"or "mature capitalism"as though earlier of growth had nowenteredan end-gamephase. forces Now a new chapterhas opened: the economy is globaland makes use of new technology; mammothgovernment and bureaucracies are becoming bothmoreflexible and corporate less secure institutions. The social guarantees of the welfare states of an earlierera are breaking itself has down,capitalism become economically flexible,highlymobile, its corporate structures ever less determinate in formand in time.These structural changes are linked to a sudden and massive of productivity, new goods like computers, new outpouring services likethe globalfinancial industries. The cornucopiais forthemoment full. As a result, though, the ways we work have altered: short-term skills evolve;the jobs replacestablecareers, rapidly middleclassexperiences anxieties and uncertainties thatwere, in an earlierera, moreconfined to theworking classes. Place has a different now as in large part well, meaning thanks to these economic changes. An earlier generation believednations, and within could governtheir nations, cities, own fortunes; the economic network is less now, emerging
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susceptibleto the controlsof geography. One measure of the changing relation between economy and place is immigration-a force perplexing cities like New York and Vienna, is not accidental,but tied since the appearance of immigrants to subtle structural changes in the economy of these cities.Yet the appearance of these strangers does not encompass the magnitude of the transformation of place we are now experiencing. A divide has opened between polity- in the sense of self-rule- and the global economy. The culture of this new capitalistorder of work and place is the focus of my own reflections-that is, what differencethe new politicaleconomy makes in our ethicalvalues, our sense of one another as social creatures, and our understanding of ourselves. As a point of departure, I'd like to put forwardto you two simple propositions that seem to be emerging from this new order. The firstis that the new capitalism is impoverishing the workis value of work. Becoming more flexibleand short-term, durable for of reference as a to serve defining point ceasing of a sense and self-worth; sociologically, personal purposes work serves ever less as a forum for stable, sociable relations. The second propositionis thatthe value of place has thereby increased. The sense of place is based on the need to belong not to "society" in the abstract, but belong somewhere in of the economy diminish institutions particular.As the shifting the experience of belonging somewhere special at work, people's commitments increase to geographic places like of nations,cities,and localities.The question is, commitments what sort? Nationalism or ethnic localism- often expressed as or other outsiders- can indeed serve as hatred of immigrants defensive refuges against a hostile economic order, but at a steep human price. The man who hates the outside is weakened, ratherthan strengthened, by his hatred. These two propositionsmightsuggest an unrelievedlybleak view of the cultureof the emergingpoliticaleconomy. But this is not my view. Work is a problematicframe for the self,since
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successand personal worth. And the ittendsto equateworldly in fortunes valueon place arousedbytroubled renewed might the opportunity to construct a factpresentan opportunityabout themselves and act publicrealmin whichpeople think their value as citizens other than as economic animals, socially notdependantupon theirriches. At least,thiswas Hannah Arendt's hope a generation ago, when she made, in The Human Condition (1958), her between labor and politics.She hoped famous distinction that in urban life, with its large scale and particularly thatdid impersonality, people could conducta civicexistence or depend upon, theirpersonalfortunes. not merely reflect, of theneweconomy the uncertainties Today, arguemorethan as wellas civicbehavior, unchainedfrom everfora selfhood, of labor. Yet the places in whichthis might the conditions be citiesof the classicalkind thatArendt occur can neither nor can theybe defensive, localities. admired, inward-turning We need a new kind of public realm to cope withthe new economy.
Growth
To make sense of the cultureof the emergingpolitical we need to understand itskeyword, Growth economy, growth. in fourways. mostsimply, occurs, The simplest in number, suchas more wayis sheerincrease antsin a colony, moretelevision setson themarket. Growth of thissortappearsin economic writers likeJean thinking among whose loi des dbouchs that "increased Baptiste Say, postulated of growth that supplycreatesitsown demand."That's a form forinstance, in thecomputer appearsin themodern economy, the of hardware and software industry, ever-increasing supply and pushingproductdemand. arousing An increasein numbercan lead to alteration of structure, which is howAdam Smith conceived of growth in TheWealth of
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he said, the divisionof labor in Nations'larger marketstrigger, work. Increase of size that begets complexityof structurehas been the way governmentbureaucracyas well as industry have in the The of the new past. grown technology capitalism this kind of in the ever more exemplifies growth complex of information structure serviceslinkingthe world. A third kind of growth occurs through metamorphosis; a body changes its shape or structure without necessarily increasingin number. A mothturninginto a butterfly growsin this way, so do characters in a novel. Much of the internal growth of modern corporations has occurred in this form. Though the press focuses on job loss and downsizing in the modern economy, radical metamorphoses in corporate structure can often occur even when the number of employees remains relativelyconstant; metamorphosischaracterizes the of bankingand other financialserviceindustries, restructuring for instance. Finally,a systemcan grow by becoming more democratic. This kind of growth is antifoundational, as John Dewey argued: the elements in a system are free to interact and influence one another so that boundaries become febrile, formsbecome mixed; the systemcontractsor expands in parts without overall coordination. Communications networkslike the early Internet are obvious examples of how growth can occur democratically.Such a growth process differsfrom a market mechanism, in which an exchange ideally clears all transactions and so regulates all actors in the system. and cognitivedissonances take on a Resistances,irregularities, in forms of growth. This is why democratic value positive subjectivelife develops throughsomethinglike the practiceof inner democracy- interpretativeand emotional complexity emerges without a master plan, a hegemonic rule, an undisputed explanation. My own view is that this form of growth is more than a of the matterof pure process; the veryfreedomand flexibility defined for the need forms, signposts, process gives rise to
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tentative rituals,and provisionaldecisions thatmatterin future conduct, all of which help people orient themselves.And my argument is that the flexible economy is destroyingexactly these formalelementsthatorientpeople in the process of truly democratic growth. Put another way, what we need to cope withthe emerging politicaleconomy is to promote more truly democraticformsof flexiblegrowth.The question is, Where? At the workplace,in the community? Are theyequally possible, or equally desirable, sites for democracy?
Smith'sParadox
A cultural paradox of growthhas dogged the development of modern capitalism throughoutit long history:as material growth occurs, the qualitative experience of work often becomes impoverished. The age of High Capitalism- which for convenience's sake can be said to span the two centuriesfollowingthe publication of Adam Smith'sThe Wealth ofNationsin 1776- was an era that lusted for sheer quantitative growth, of the first sort I've described, but had trouble dealing with the human consequences of the second sort, in which the increase of wealth occurred throughmore complex economic structures. Adam Smith argued that the division of labor, a structural complexity,was promoted by the expansion of free markets withever greater numbers of goods, services,and laborers in circulation;a growingsocietyseemed to him like a honeycomb, each new cell the place for ever more specialized tasks. A nail-maker doing everything himself could make a few hundred nails a day; Smith calculated if nail-making was broken down into all itscomponent parts,and each workerdid only one of them, a nail-maker could process more than thousand nails a day. However, work experience forty-eight would become more routine in the process. Breaking the tasks involvedin making nails down into its component parts would
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condemn individual nail-makersto a numbinglyboring day, hour afterhour spent doing one smalljob. I'll call this coupling of material growth and qualitative Smith's Paradox- he recognized its existence impoverishment but didn't name it as such. Smith's Paradox came down into our time as what we call "Fordist production," the kind of workorganized in Ford's Highland Park plant in assembly-line Michigan during the FirstWorld War. Proponents of the new order claim that Smith's Paradox is now coming to an end; modern technologypromises to banish routine work to the innards of new machines, leaving ever more workersfree to do flexible,nonroutinetasks.But in fact, the qualitativeimpoverishment has instead taken new forms. "de-skills" who now The new technologyfrequently workers, tend, as the electronicjanitors of robotic machines, complex tasks the workersonce performedthemselves.The conditions forworkerswilllearn ofjob tenureoftencompound deskilling, to do a particularjob well, only to find that work task at an end. An executive for AT&T recentlysummed up the aim of reorganizingwork this way: "In AT&T we have to promote the whole concept of the work forcebeing contingent, though most of the contingentworkersare inside our walls. Jobs' are " being replaced by 'projects' and 'fields of work.' The reality now facingyoung workerswithat least two years of college is that theywill change jobs, on average, at least eleven times in the course of theirworkinglives. the divisionof labor now separates those who More brutally, get to work,and those who don't: large numbersof people are set free of routine tasks only to find themselves useless or underused economically,especiallyin the contextof the global labor supply. Geography no longer simplyseparates the skilled FirstWorld fromthe unskilledThird World; computercode is for instance, in Bombay for a third to a writtenefficiently, seventhits cost in IBM home offices. Let me say a few words more about this particular
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on job creation do notquite getat the Statistics phenomenon. ofjobs, evengood skilled thenumber fearof uselessness; jobs, does not dictatewho willhave access to them,how long the jobs can be held,or, indeed,how long thejobs willexist.Ten the U.S. economyhad a deficitof years ago, for instance, ofsuchhighly analysts, todayithas a surplus systems computer to ideology, trainedworkers.And many do not, contrary retrainwell; their skills are too specific.The specter of uselessness,shadowingthe lives of educated middle-class problem people,has now compoundedthe older experiential workers: as well as too many of routineamong less-favored thereis a systems analysts, engineers, programmers, qualified of securities M.B.A.s, salesmen,and lawyers, growingglut academics.The young sufferthe pangs of uselessnessin a cruel way,since an ever-expanding educational particularly for trains them ever more elaborately jobs thatdo not system exist. The undertowconnotation of uselessness, and deskilling, tasklabor is a dispensableself. Instead of the institutionally inducedboredomof theassembly deficit line,thisexperiential theworker, whohasn'tmade himor appearsmoreto lie within of lasting value to others, and so can simply herself disappear from view.The economic languagein use today- "skills-based "informational "task-flexible labor," economy," competence," and thelike- shifts the focusfromimpersonal conditions like the possession of capital to more personal matters of Economicflexibility is legitimated competence. by appeals to While the shift in personal autonomy. language seems in fact itcan increase theburdens psychologically empowering, on theworking self. In turn, thesenseof failing to be of muchvaluein personally thiseconomy has greatsociological WhatMichael implications. in feared his RiseofMeritocracy (1959) Young prophetic essayThe has come to pass: as theeconomy needseverfewer, edhighly ucatedpeople to run it,the "moraldistance" distance between mass and elite widens. The masses, now comprising
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people in suitsand ties as well as those in overalls,appear to theeliteproductive core; theemerging peripheral economy itslaborbase. The economy's on profits byshrinking emphasis personalagencyhelps explain whywelfaredependencyand are such sensitive issuesforpeople whosefortunes parasitism in theworld. are now troubled Enthusiastsfor the new economy are, as they say in "in denial"on the subjectof disposablelabor. In a California, the popularclassicabout moderncorporations, Re-engineering (1993), the authors Michael Hammer and Corporation James Champydefend "re-engineering" against the charge that it is a mere cover for firing people by asserting and restructuring onlymean doingless withless. "downsizing meansdoingmore withless."The by contrast Re-engineering, withthe denialsof an "less"in the last sentencereverberates who Social Darwinism: those are not fitwill somehow older disappear. economists Some tough-minded argue thatcurrentforms and paraof unemployment, under-employment, deskilling, sitism are incurable in the emerging order, since the fromdoing "morewithless."What I indeed profits economy wish to emphasize is that the modern economy,no more than the classical capitalisteconomy,offersa solution to Smith's Paradox, to the problem of impoverishedwork of The sheerincreaseofjobs, the reorganization experience. that increase not forms of are of the division labor, growth the qualityof laboringexperience.Instead, this qualitative makes increasingnumbersof people feel impoverishment that they personallyhave no footingin the process of And thatlack of footing economicgrowth. poses a profound challenge:can we, throughpoliticalmeans,provide political and necessary people witha sense thattheyare worthwhile and consequenthumanbeings?
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Durable Time
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In themoderneconomy, management guruspreachgrowth that is, the willfulremakingof through metamorphosis, institutions fromthe top down; it is a rupturing formof Social democrats have also resorted to thisimage of growth. from bottom to the with Smith's Paradox.We up, cope growth, call thispractice variously "auto-gestion," "self-management," or simply all strong variants of social "changefromwithin"the act of change democracy. Though the aim is admirable, needs to be lookedat moreclosely. It supposesthe reform of work,and more largelysocial justice, achieved througha will. act of collective decisive The model of growthon which these efforts are based in the Metamorphoses: harkenback to Ovid's declaration "My is to tell of bodies which have been transformed into purpose of a different kind." You will recallOvid believedthat shapes theworldcame intobeingwhena god first sortedintodistinct a forms primal"shapeless,uncoordinated mass . . . whose ill-assorted elements wereindiscriminately in heaped together one place." Change fromwithin supposesordercan be made out of chaos by an act of will;in political the polity is terms, The social difficulty with this model arises, self-creating. from the of time in thisact of will. though, framing Basicsocialbondsliketrust, and obligation loyalty, requirea time to cannot create the long develop; you instantly loyalty a newgovernment wayyoucan form corporationbyan actof And timeequallydevelopsthe will,by sheermetamorphosis. sense of personalworth, whichis foundedon the conviction thatone's experience is morethana seriesof randomevents. Personal time, like civic time, must possess duration and coherence.You forma sense of subjective of your strength, last,but willalone is positive agency, through makingthings insufficient to accomplishing thattask. In the previous becamea precarious era, duration capitalist dimension of time. The progress of nineteenth-century
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capitalismwas anythingbut steadyand linear, lurchinginstead fromdisasterto disasterin the stock marketsand in irrational capital investment. A certain kind of character typeappearing in the pages of Balzac but also in the more mundane annals of finance- fed on these crises, thrived on disorder, and most of all possessed a capacity for disloyalty.For every responsible capitalist like Andrew Carnegie, there were hundreds ofJayGoulds, adept at walkingaway fromtheirown disasters. Less powerful or more responsible human beings, though,could hardlyflourishunder these conditions. Max Weber's famous image of modern life confined in an "iron cage" slightsstability as a positive event in the lives of For instance, the service ethic of steady, ordinary people. self-denying, lifelong effortWeber evoked in The Protestant Ethic and the Spiritof Capitalism (1930) aided his less-favored contemporariesin purchasinga home, and home ownershipin the nineteenth centurybecame one of the fewbulwarksagainst the capitaliststorm,as well as a source of personal and family honor. Weber again feared the rise at the beginning of the twentieth centuryof large national bureaucracies and corporations that made use of the service ethic,earning the loyaltyof those whom they made secure; Weber doubted that loyal servants make objectivelyminded citizens. Yet pettybureaucrats, time servers,and the like derived a sense of status and public honor from their stations in bureaucracies. T. H. Marshall, the intellectualfatherof the modern Britishwelfare state,understood this well: however staticbig institutions may to change fromwithin, be, howeverresistant theyprovide their members a scaffoldingof mutual loyalty and of trust that eventscan be controlled,whichare prerequisitesof citizenship. The bureaucratas good citizenis not a pretty picture,but then, in at all. the no interest had Gould subject Jay architecture The currentrush to take apart thisinstitutional is undoing the social, civic dimensions of durable time. Take loyalty,for example: in the emerging political economy, as
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do shifting, task-centered to jobs, loyalties people increasingly of course needs all This generalization diminish. institutions forinstance, one study of dismissed IBM of qualification; sorts found thatthe people withmore than twenty programmers about the company, remainedenthusiastic of service years while acceptingtheir firingas a matterof fate. A more sense of loyalty diminished workers, appears amongyounger who have morebrutaldealingswiththe new economicorder; view the places where they manyof these youngerworkers as sitesto makecontacts withpeople who can get workmostly or simply thembetter, other, jobs. In this, theyounghavenotfailedto do their sincenew duty, in return, institutions makeno guarantees economic replacing whenever with workworkers possible temporary permanent or work. ers, forinstance, "offshoring" Loyalty requiresthat in accumulate an and the institution, personal experience willnotlet it accumulate. Indeed, economy political emerging ease with which international the profitable capital today assembles,sells, and reassemblescorporationserases the to which of institutions one could develoployalty or durability obligations. in reckoningthe social conseTime, then, is everything And as a cultural value, economy. quencesof thenewpolitical that favored child of is less rupturepost-modernismpolitithantheassertion thatpeople oughtto have callychallenging the rightto develop loyalty and commitment within institutions.If thedominant violate powersof the political economy durable time,could individualsprovide for themselves or informally amongstone anotherthe timeframeinstitutions them? deny This questionis less abstract than it mightfirst seem. The moderneconomy did not simply out the social wipe struggles and personalvaluesformed in an earlierphase of capitalism. Whathas been carriedintothepresent from thepastare a set of subjective values for time coherentand values, making butin entirely This personal, durable durable, personalterms.
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with the new economy of work in particularly time intersects disturbingways.

A CoherentSelf
The Victorians founded their sense of self-worthon life organized as one long project: the German values offormation, the English virtues of purpose, were for keeps. Careers in or imperial bureaucracies made the lifelong business,military, project possible, grading work into a clear sequence of steps. Such expectations devalue the present for the sake of the future- the present,which is in constantupheaval and which may temptan individual into bywaysor evanescent pleasures. as a mentalityof Weber thus described future-orientation Yet thisVictorianexperience of cohering delayed gratification. time has another side, which theysubsumed under the ethical for one's life. Will enters into categoryof takingresponsibility for one's life,though in a way that act of takingresponsibility quite opposite from the innovatorycharacter of the will to change fromwithin. In Thus Spake Zarathustra Nietzsche wrote, "powerless against what has been done, he is an angry spectator of all that is past. The will cannot will backwards." But Nietzsche's contemporaries did bend the will backwards in time. The Victorians bent consciousness backwards to compose out of the dislocations, accidental changes of direction, or unused capacities of a life a record for which one had to take even though these events might be personal responsibility, beyond the actual control of the person who experienced them. Freud's early case histories, like his study of the "Wolf-Man," revolve around costs of organizing time in this the act of takingresponsibility, cohering fashion- particularly of with its consequent feelings guilt, for past events beyond time one's control.The poet Senancour combinedthe subjective "I to live that in become, but of future and past declaring
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I carrythe unshakable burdenof what I have been." Freud remarksthat such feelingsof responsibility are modern in contrast to earlierages when people felttheir sentiments, in thehandsof the gods,God, or blindfortune. lifehistories these late Victorian valuesof personalresponsibility Today, are as strong as a century institutional context has ago buttheir The iron has been so that dismantled, changed. cage individuals for and in a seemingly coherence struggle security arena. The destruction of institutional at work, empty supports as in the welfarestate,leaves individuals onlytheirsense of the Victorian ethos now often charts a negative responsibility; of defeated of havingfailedto one's lifecohere will, trajectory one's work. through Twenty-five yearsago (for the book TheHiddenInjuries of Class [1973], I interviewed workersin Boston who knew work was beyond their control, like Nietzsche's "angry forwhathappenedto them. spectators," yettookresponsibility In thatgeneration, a catastrophe in theeconomy thatcaused a to lose his worker, home,rousedthisdoubleconsciousness say, of beingan angryspectator and a responsible agent.Today, theprocesses thatexpand theeconomy in exactly put workers thisdouble bind. Take what happens when career paths are replaced by intermittent jobs. Many temporaryworkershave a dual consciousnessof their work, knowing such work suits thatif obligation-resistant companies, yetnonetheless believing had themselves livesdifferently, onlythey managedtheir they would have made a career out of their skills,and so be The neweconomic permanently employed. map thatdevalues career has shifted the lifelong projects optimalage curvesof workto younger, rawemployees used to be late twenties to (it middle fifties; now it's early twenties to early forties), even Studies thoughadultsare livinglongerand morevigorously. of dismissedmiddle-aged workersfind them both obsessed and puzzled by the liabilities of age. Ratherthan believing themselves fadedand overthehill,they feelthey knowwhatto
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do, thattheyare more organized and purposefulthan younger workers.Yet they blame themselvesfor not having made the rightmoves in the past, for not having prepared. Their work historiesare like Senancour's burden, heavy memories. This legacy of personal responsibility deflects anger away fromeconomic institutions. The rhetoricof modern management indeed attemptsto disguise power in the new economy by making the worker believe he or she is a self-directing theCorporation declare, agent; as the authors of Re-engineering in the emerging institutions "managers stop acting like supervisors and behave more like coaches." It is not false consciousness that makes such statementscredible to those who are likelyto sufferfrom them; rather,a twistedsense of moral agency. In his On the Dignity of Man (1965), the Renaissance philosopher Pico della Mirandola declared, "man is an animal and destructiblenature"; in this pliant of diverse, multiform, condition,"it is given to him to have thatwhichhe chooses and to be that which he wills." Man is his own maker; the chief of his works is his self-worth. In modernity, people take for their lives because the whole of it feels their responsibility making. But when the ethical culture of modernity,with its and life purpose, is carried codes of personal responsibility into a societywithoutinstitutional shelters,there appears not in the midstof growth. failure of but a dialectics of pride self, Growth in the new economy depends on gutting corporate size, ending bureaucratic guarantees, profitingfrom the flux and extensions of economic networks.People come to know such dislocationsas their own lack of direction.The ethics of becomes, ironically,and terribly,a subjective responsibility one's failure to cohere. to measure yardstick This is why I'd like to see new discussions about social democracyenlarged beyond the frameof referenceof worker or collectiveparticipation.We have to think self-management throughsocial democracyin termsof thislegacyof subjectivity, one in which time is deeply personal, in which self-
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of durabletimebecomesan ethics of responsibilmanagement now coexistswithcapitalist of practices ity.This subjectivity and as a terrible duetif or, youlike, metamorphosis rupture, and change. of continuity dialecticsto thisduet, Tve wonderedif its strength As Tve listening be weakenedby easing the subjective voice; thatis, by might of the burden and time that self-responsibility lightening And thatreflection me back people bear in modernity. brings to thequestionof place.
Place
The cityis democracy's home, Hannah Arendtdeclared; that meant to her it was a place for forming and loyalties relieved of the burdens of materialcircumresponsibilities, stanceand itssubjective thecities we However, interpretation. knowbear littlerelationto this ideal place, nor do smaller communities. Placesinsteadare valuedsimply as refuges from and theystrengthen the cultural, voice dislocation, subjective and duration. In America for I am instance, seekingstability thatthe rise convinced, thoughI couldn'tproveit statistically, of the religious in American a movement now suburbs, right toward thecity from itstraditional small-town base, spreading correlatesto an increased feelingof threatenedeconomic fortunes. So does our emphasison "family values"in an age whenvery fewfamilies can afford to practice thetradition of a male wage-earner thehome. single, supporting In terms of the modernurban,we are seeingin manyadvanced societies the appearanceof buildingprojects thatare in withdrawal exercises from a complexworld, selfdeploying "traditional" architecture that a consciously bespeaks mythic communal coherenceand shared identity in the past. These comforts of a supposedlysimplerage appear in the NewEnglandish housingdevelopments designedby the American
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planners Elizabeth Platter-Zyberg and Andreas Duwany, among the architects in Britain working for the Prince of and in the Wales to reproduce "native" English architecture, on the continent undertaken work neighborhood renovation by Leon Krier. All these place-makers are artistsof claustrophobia, whose icons, however, do indeed promise stability, and safety. longevity, kind of urbanism,one attuned We need instead a different to public values and that avoids place-making on these conservative terms. In this sense, I agree with Jrgen Habermas that the public realm and the democratic realm have to be considered as identical- whereas in the past history of cities, they certainly were not. But, given what is now happening in the economy,a public and democraticcityhas to take formthroughthree concrete principles. First, it has to assert itself as a physical polity. Modern corporationslike to presentthemselvesas having cut free from in Mexico, an officein Bombay, a media local powers: a factory center in lower Manhattan- these appear as mere nodes in a global network. Today, localities fear that if they exercise as when a business is taxed or regulated locally, sovereignty, in the corporationcould as easily find another node, a factory Canada if not Mexico, an officein Boston if not Manhattan. Alreadywe are seeing signs,though,thatthe economy is not as has been assumed: you can buy as locationallyindifferent any stockyou like in Dubuque, Iowa, but not make a marketin stocks in the cornfields; the ivy cloisters of Harvard may furnishplentyof raw intellectualtalent,yet lack the craziness, if messiness,and surprise that makes Manhattan a stimulating unpleasant place to work. Similarly,in Southeast Asia, it is becoming clear that local social and cultural geographies decisions.This is to indeed count fora greatdeal in investment say that communitiescan indeed challenge the new economy react to it. Put simply,place has power. ratherthan defensively Second, a modern sense of place has to be internally structured by a geography of borders ratherthan boundaries;
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a democratic is notjust diverse, diversities have to community have a physical meeting ground,theyhave to growintoeach other. Planning,especiallyin large-scaleenvironments, can on thebordersof open groupsup to one another by focusing local subcommunities as active zones. For instance,"active edge" plannerstodayseek to directnew buildingaway from local centers and towardtheboundaries communiseparating in EastLondon,theaimis to make ties:as in someexperiments the edge a febrile zone of interaction and exchangebetween different is to diversify central groups. Another strategy so that different functions and interactin spaces, overlap in centers: Los are geographic planners Angeles seekingways to put clinics,government and old-age centersinto offices, devoted solely to shoppingmalls that have been formerly activities; consumption planners in Germanyare similarly how zones in the centersof citiescan exploring pedestrian regainlightmanufacturing. In honorof Arendt, call themselves manyof theseplanners membersof a "new agora" movement. In the case of the the belief is that the more active-edge planners, animating themorethey willbecomeinvolved with those peopleinteract, in thecase of thecentral unlike zone planners, that themselves; the value of place will increase when it is of more than commercial value.Such planning is democratic in myown use of the word; the agora has a definedshape, and thatshape aims to increasecomplexity ratherthanclarity of purposeor of use. hegemony a Third, public, democratic city has to address the of laborI havedescribed. It can do so bycreating subjectivities of where spheres impersonality, places peoplecan relateto one anotherpositively as strangers. This mayseem an abstract or cold proposition, but we experienceit vividly wheneverwe plungeintoa crowdedstreet. A hoary cliche views impersonal crowds as an evil; thehistory of thecity, throughout people havevotedotherwise with their feet. And one great theme in the literature of
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modern urban culture- from Baudelaire to Aragon to Benjamin to Jane Jacobs- finds in crowds a peculiar antidote to selfhood with all its burdens, a release into a less personalized existence. When she moved to Washington Square in 1906, beginningan affairwithanotherwoman, Willa Cather declared, "At last I can breathe," by which she meant that her erotic life no longer defined the terms of her social existence- at least in the dense, impersonal place to which she does more than shelteroutsidersor had moved. Impersonality forwhat Stuart membersof subcultures;it offersthe possibility of a mixture social elements Hall calls "hybridity," beyond any of self. definition single Impersonal release has a particularvalue in termsof social class and material fortune. Various studies of existing mixed-classareas of big citieslike New York and London yield an interesting portrait:intimate"neighborliness"is weak, but with the neighborhood is strong; the poor are identification relieved of social stigma, those richer- contraryto common sense, that most fallible of all guides- find daily life in a diverse neighborhood more stimulatingthan in places that serve as privatemirrors.These studies exemplifythe sociologand ical propositionadvanced by Durkheim thatimpersonality equality have a strongaffinity. Modern planners are bad, the architectRem Koolhas has justly observed, in workingon a large scale. Our urbanism is as if only the small and bedeviled by the desire for intimacy, is human. Moreover, there are many the gemeinschaftlich technicalissues of urban design involved- withwhich I won't tryyour patience- about how make impersonal large spaces, as well as live edges or mixed functionspaces, durable sites. I want only to emphasize that the relief of self to be found in dense streets,mixed pubs, playgrounds,and marketscannot be treatedas inconsequential.Such dense formsof civilsociety do affecthow people thinkof themselvesas citizens;as the late Henri Lefebvre put it, sensing one's "right to the city"helps
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people feel entitledto other rights,rightsnot based on or on victimhood. personalinjuries A democratic as I understand it relieves community people of certain burdensof identity thatinherein class,and in both identification with and representation of one's material circumstances. The impersonality of citizenship seemsto me a from relief the stronger psychological damage people experience in the economythan class consciousness. Of course no one could argue that a democratic will life city extinguish either the realityor the sentiments aroused by economic failure. But "extinguish," like"rupture," belongsto thesphere of growthenvisionedthrough metamorphosis. I imagine rather a kind of concurrentconsciousness,in which a over-the-hill worker can also think of middle-aged supposedly himor herself in an entirely otherway,byvirtue of wherehe or she lives; this doubleness of self seems to me more thanthestriving forrebirth, as in a metamorphopracticeable sis. To conclude:whether we seek democracy in workplaces or in cities, we need to addresstheculture of thenewcapitalism. The economydoes not "grow" personal skillsand durable norsocialtrust, and commitment. Economic purposes, loyalty, has combined, witha durablecultural however, ethic, practice so thatinstitutional nakednesscoexistswiththe will to take for one's life.The formsof polity we need to responsibility inventmust help people transcendboth elementsof that combination: we need a model of growth thathelps people transcend the selfas a burdensome possession. Place-making based on exclusion, sameness, or nostalgia is poisonous medicine and psychologically useless;a selfweighted socially, withits insufficiencies cannotliftthatburdenby retreat into based on more diverse, denser, fantasy. Place-making impersonal human contacts mustfinda way for thosecontacts to the endure; the agora has to prove a durable institutionthaturbanists likemyself mustnowconfront. challenge Baudelairefamously defined as experience of the modernity
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To accept life in its disjointed and the fragmented. fleeting of but stillthesepieces an adult is experience freedom, pieces in a place that mustlodge and embed themselves somewhere, allowsthemto growand to endure. References
of Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition (Chicago: University ChicagoPress,1958). theCorporaHammer,Michael,and Champy, James,Re-engineering Revolution tion:A Manifesto (New York: Harper for Business Business,1990). Pico della, On the Giovanni Mirandola, Dignity ofMan (Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965). tr. WalterKaufmann, ThusSpakeZarathustra, Friedrich, Nietzsche, (New York: ModernLibrary, 1955). Richard,The HiddenInjuries Sennett, of Class (New York: Vintage Books,1973). Adam,TheWealth Smith, (1776). ofNatiom and the Ethic Weber,Max, TheProtestant (London: ofCapitalism Spirit G. AllenUnwin, Ltd., 1930). 1870-2033: TheNewEliteof Young,Michael,TheRiseofMeritocracy, OurSocialRevolution (New York: RandomHouse, 1959).

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The New Capitalism Author(s): RICHARD SENNETT Reviewed work(s): Source: Social Research, Vol. 64, No.

The New Capitalism /

THE NEW CAPITALISM

THE NEW CAPITALISM

THE NEW CAPITALISM

THE NEW CAPITALISM

THE NEW CAPITALISM

with the new economy of work in particularly time intersects disturbingways.

THE NEW CAPITALISM

THE NEW CAPITALISM

THE NEW CAPITALISM

THE NEW CAPITALISM

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