THE CORROSION OF CHARACTER

The Corrosion of Character



The Corrosion of Character

A professor of sociology at New York University and the London School of Economics, Sennett has long been a provocative but not always lucid student of the impact of capitalism on personal identity. His first book, The Hidden Injuries of Class (1972), was a memorable examination of the psychic and moral tolls exacted by the work ethic. Yet much of Sennett's work after Injuries, while more ambitious in scope, also suffered from conceptual and literary muddle. Now, returning to the personal interviews that made Injuries so powerful, a cogent and readable Sennett tells us more about the degeneration of "character" in America than all the flatulent moralizing of William Bennett (Argyris, 2004, pp.135).

For Sennett, "character" is the capacity to make and keep commitments - not just in marriage, but in friendships, communities, and workplaces - and the ability to provide continuous, coherent narratives of personal experience. In Sennett's view, the "new capitalism" - the world of "flexibility" and "reinvention" in labor markets, work schedules, institutions, and technology - renders "character" impossible. Ready to turn on a dime in response to new markets and technologies, contemporary capitalism demolishes the social and cultural foundations of "character," and upholds instead the punishing ideal of incessant metamorphosis.

By way of contrast, Sennett looks back unsentimentally to the regime of work and production that reigned in corporate America for three decades after World War II: "Fordism," in the terminology Sennett borrows from historians and sociologists (Arts, 2008, pp.124). Though rightly bemoaned as constricting and "conformist," the Fordist world of the blue-collar stiff and the gray-flannel suit preserved a predictable connection between labors and rewards. It also featured hierarchies which, however rigid, defined power relations, responsibilities, and obligations. Ironically, Sennett notes, these routines marked out "an arena of empowerment" in which workers forged bonds of solidarity, resisted managerial fiat, and asserted their own demands. Moreover, Fordist rules and rhythms, while they could numb the mind and body, also enabled workers to "beget narratives" that lifted their routinized labor from drudgery into coherence, dignity, and community (Kim, 2000, pp.44).

The new, "post-Fordist" regime lauds all things unpredictable, lightweight, and "flexible." The new capitalism is the just-in-time world of temp work, flextime, user-friendly technologies, and small, infinitely rearrangeable workforces. As Sennett demonstrates, the Kingdom of Customer Service begets not the bonds and narratives of "character," but rather indifference, lassitude, and personal decomposition. "User-friendly" technology, for instance (when it isn't surveilling workers more closely than ever before), erodes the dedication, workmanship, and identity acquired through mastering difficult tasks. As one button-pushing young worker in a computerized bakery sums it up for Sennett, "I'm not really a baker" - leaving himself and Sennett unclear as to who or what he is (Magala, 2002, pp.24).

At the same time, smaller, flexible, and mobile workforces, while they require employees to cultivate valuable interpersonal skills, also inhibit the establishment of durable bonds. The new entrepreneur (embodied most clearly for Sennett in the geeky mendacity of Bill ...