>sennett and cobb ... 'the hidden injuries of class'. indeed, i'd suggest a
list
> reading
> i really think this book would be an interesting read for the list. not
> only is it simply a classic, but it also speaks to something i've long
> thought about: given that people have more access to higher education and
> are, increasingly, working in the kinds of jobs that signify 'clean'
> 'mental' labor, then what might sennett and cobb's work have to tell us
> today. they'd captured the socially mobile ethnic [white] working class as
> some of them became 'upwardly mobile' but this was largely structural
> mobility.
i can't entirely recall sennett and cobb's book, having not read it thoroughly a ways back in any case. but i just finished a sorta review of sennett's recent book (_the corrosion of character_), and i have to say it was one of the more insidious books i've read for a long time. it focuses on the problems of the next generation (relative to that studied in _hidden injuries_). the moral of that story is that late capitalism is bad because it undermines (corrodes) such nice things in workers' "characters" as the work ethic, traditional (hierarchical) authority, long-term committment (which i took to be tacitly a problem re workers' loyalty to the company)... doug mentioned that the fuss over the increase in work insecurity (with which sennett's book is preoccupied) is really a fuss over the extension of such conditions to those who previously were not subject to them and who enjoyed relatively more priveliged circumstances: managerial and intellectual workers, usually male.
in short, _corrosion_ is (as is evident from the title really) a thoroughly nostalgic book, whose entire probematic is drawn from the conservative sociological fetish with 'social order' and 'social cohesion'... not with the prospects and limits of class struggle, not to mention a pretty appalling conception of progress as indexed by the apparent decline of the supposedly virtuous (ie., conservative) character traits of workers. the greatest fear seems to be the projected likelihood that subsequent generations will be 'mall rats'...
i'm hoping that _hidden injuries_ does not have similar preoccupations.
someone mentioned to me an essay (in either _capital and class_ or some other journal) critiquing sennett and cobb's _hidden injuries_, but i've been unable to locate it. does anyone know where i might find it or similar?
Angela _________