Richard Sennett Flexibility
Chapter 3, Flexible, by Richard Sennett, “The Corrosion of Character”
As a whole, Richard Sennett’s book The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism discusses the effect of the flexible capitalist economy on the lives of workers during the 1990s.
Chapter 3 focuses mainly on flexibility. Sennett compares the flexibility of a human being to that of a tree, whereby, the tree has the capacity both to yield and to recover, from both the testing and the restoration.
Theoretically, a flexible person ought to have the same tensile strength as the tree. That is, the person should be able to adapt himself to changing circumstances and resist to tension. Sennett states that routine is an evil of the old capitalism, and that in recent times, the workplace has been made "flexible" by means of the restructuring of time (flex time, part time jobs, increased use of swing and graveyard type shifts, etc.). However, in practical and in today’s society, the practices of flexibility focus mainly on the forces that bend people.
(Today, “Flexible capitalism” describes the goal of most modern companies, to be able to continuously change to fit the market. Companies no longer provide job descriptions or long term contracts, but rather an opportunity to compete in a winner-takes-all market.)
Many modern philosophers such as Locke and Hume have associated the bending aspect of flexibility with a person’s self powers of sensations. These sensations come from events happening in the world outside that elicits different responses, and hence bend the self from one way to another.
Adam Smith’s theory of moral sentiments was founded on these external changing stimuli itself.
Subsequently, philosophers tried to find principles of inner regulation and recovery which would rescue the sense of oneself from sensory fluctuations.
However, after the writings that Adam devoted to political economy, emphasis was put on complete change.
As a whole, Richard Sennett’s book The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism discusses the effect of the flexible capitalist economy on the lives of workers during the 1990s.
Chapter 3 focuses mainly on flexibility. Sennett compares the flexibility of a human being to that of a tree, whereby, the tree has the capacity both to yield and to recover, from both the testing and the restoration.
Theoretically, a flexible person ought to have the same tensile strength as the tree. That is, the person should be able to adapt himself to changing circumstances and resist to tension. Sennett states that routine is an evil of the old capitalism, and that in recent times, the workplace has been made "flexible" by means of the restructuring of time (flex time, part time jobs, increased use of swing and graveyard type shifts, etc.). However, in practical and in today’s society, the practices of flexibility focus mainly on the forces that bend people.
(Today, “Flexible capitalism” describes the goal of most modern companies, to be able to continuously change to fit the market. Companies no longer provide job descriptions or long term contracts, but rather an opportunity to compete in a winner-takes-all market.)
Many modern philosophers such as Locke and Hume have associated the bending aspect of flexibility with a person’s self powers of sensations. These sensations come from events happening in the world outside that elicits different responses, and hence bend the self from one way to another.
Adam Smith’s theory of moral sentiments was founded on these external changing stimuli itself.
Subsequently, philosophers tried to find principles of inner regulation and recovery which would rescue the sense of oneself from sensory fluctuations.
However, after the writings that Adam devoted to political economy, emphasis was put on complete change.