R Sennett The Corrosion of Character. The personal consequences of Essay

R Sennett The Corrosion of Character. The personal consequences of work in the new capitalism. Norton 1999 - Essay Example There is no argument that change is sometimes good although often it disrupts people’s lives and may be traumatic. The bone of contention with sociologist Richard Sennett is that change and especially technological advances is the root cause of worker’s woes and the source of injuries to and corrosion of character. It has transformed the capitalist economy into a new form of â€Å"flexible capitalism† or what Sennett calls â€Å"New Economy† which is less concerned about interpersonal relationships. In Sennetts words it is â€Å"a regime which provides human beings no deep reasons to care about one another† (1999, 148). It has brought about new ways or working such as flexibility whereby jobs are replaced with projects and also involves reengineering, de-layering, downsizing; teamwork, decentralization and control; flextime; illegible work; disposablw workers and new work ethic not based on hard work like the earlier protestant ethic promoted by Max Weber. This in turn according to Sennett has brought injuries to employees as well as corroded their character as now they are unable to make a coherent narrative of their lives or build their identity around work. This essay will explore Sennett’s work The Corrosion of Character: The personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism to gain an insight as to how new ways of working injures and corrodes character and, whether it has made employees disposable and precarious workers and causes and consequences of such work in the modern corporation. The world of work is characterised by change. Sociologists like Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke give detailed accounts of how modern states and institutions emerged from state of nature to civilisation. In the state of nature, men hunted and gathered fruits for their sustenance. They then developed crude tools to skin animals and also for farming. With bountiful harvest and domestication of