Culture of the New Capitalism

Book: The Culture of the New Capitalism/ Richard Sennett Yale University Press, 2006

224pp, £14.99; ISBN 030010782X

Review

From The New Statesman, at http://www.newstatesman.com/Ideas/200603130037

"George Soros has written that "transactions have replaced relationships in people's dealings with one another". The more distant those transactions are, Sennett argues, the less of "a felt connection" there is and the more scope for social inequality. "The celebration of self- management [by subcontractors and so on] is not innocent; the firm needs no longer to think critically about its own responsibility to those whom it controls."

Sennett is here opening up a fascinating debate about how modern institutions, with their constant restructurings and delayerings, are generating ever-sharper inequality. Not just material inequality, but social inequality, too. For a society to be properly equal, Sennett says, people need to feel several types of connectedness: a secure sense of self, a feeling of being anchored in social relations beyond themselves, and a degree of competence and autonomy. All these things are being undermined by the institutional forms that are emerging.

The new economy serves the skilled elite well. With their confidence, connections and educated versatility, they are well placed to adapt. But these same people have ignored how the new conditions have stripped many others of the social context that work used to provide. We've heard plenty of commentators claim that flexi-bility, portfolio careers and "self-management" have liberated us from Max Weber's "iron cage" of bureaucracy. But for most people these things have meant the erasure of loyalty, the attenuation of responsibility and the proliferation of anxiety."