Book description
Living with people who differ -- racially, ethnically, religiously,
or economically -- is one of the most difficult challenges facing us
today. Though our society is becoming ever more complicated
materially, we tend to avoid engaging with people unlike ourselves.
Modern politics emphasizes unity and similarity, encouraging the
politics of the tribe rather than of complexity. Together: the
rituals, pleasures and politics of Co-operation explores why
this has happened and what might be done about it.
Sennett argues that living with people unlike ourselves requires
more than goodwill: it requires skill. The foundations for skillful
co-operation lie in learning to listen well and to discuss rather than
debate. People who develop these capacities earn a reward: they can
take pleasure in the company of others.
Together traces the evolution of cooperative rituals in
medieval churches and guilds, Renaissance workshops and courts, early
modern laboratories and diplomatic embassies. In our lives today, it
explains the trials and prospects of cooperation online, face-to-face
in ethnic conflicts, among financial workers and community organizers.
Exploring the nature of cooperation, why it has become weak, and how
it could be strengthened, this visionary book offers a new way of
seeing how humans can live together.
Richard Sennett was founder director of the New York Institute for
the Humanities, and is now University Professor at New York University.
He has previously won the Amalfi and Ebert prizes for sociology and in
2010 was awarded the Spinoza Prize for outstanding contributions to
public debate on ethics and morality.
Together
forms part of a three-book project on 'homo faber, 'focusing on the
skills human beings possess to make a life together;the first volume of
this large project,
The Craftsman
, was published in 2008. He is the author of many celebrated books
including
The Fall of Public Man
,
Flesh and Stone
and
The Corrosion of Character
.
