Research Paper on:
Corrosion of Character by Richard Sennett

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
it is quite natural for people to wonder how the new flexibility of capitalism will impact their lives. Using a mix of informal and formal sources, economic data, historical accounts  and social theories, Sennett offers an anthropological perspective to examining the daily life of work. !Chapter 1?Drift Sennett uses a chance encounter with "Rico," the son of a man  that Sennett profiled in one of his previous books, The Hidden Injuries of Class, to discuss how the world of work has changed by comparing the life of the father,  who works as a janitor, and the son, whom the father sacrificed for in order to send him to college. Sennett pictures Enrico as being caught in Webers "iron cage"  of bureaucracy, existing in linear time, where he does the same work on a year in-year out basis. Rico, on the other hand, lives in the new world of flexible  time, where there is more freedom, but also more uncertainty. However, Sennett asserts that flexible behavior has not served Rico well?that Rico is a "successful and a confused man" (31).  The flexible behavior that has brought him !success is "weakening his own character in ways for which there exists no practical remedy" (31). Chapter 2?Routine Two competing views of  routine are presented?Diderots Encyclopedia pictured routine was instructive; Smiths Wealth of Nations pictured routine as mind-numbing. Karl Marx was a close reader of Smith. Assembly line work at the  car plant of Henry Ford epitomized everything that Smith and Marx feared. Industrial psychological research showed that any change that treated human beings as sentient beings increased productivity (41). Routine  "time slavery" culminated in Enricos generation, who caught in the "iron cage of time" (41). But, can "flexibility" remedy the human evil it sets out to attack? (45). Chapter