rc-am wrote:
> kelley wrote:
>
> >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
> _________
-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu