Aus dem Inhalt / from the book:
Kurzbeschreibung
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Textauszug
Videos
Zum Autor
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Kurzbeschreibung:
Der am 1. Januar 1943 geborene, heute in London und New
York als Professor lehrende Richard Sennett ist in Chicago
aufgewachsen. Mit großer Konsequenz ist er immer
wieder der Frage nachgegangen, wie ein erfülltes Leben
angesichts der Auflösungstendenzen moderner
Gesellschaften möglich ist. Zwei zentralen
Lebensbereichen widmet Sennett besondere Aufmerksamkeit, der
Stadt und der Arbeit.
Unter dem Titel How I write: Sociology as
Literature (Wie ich schreibe: Soziologie als Literatur)
beschreibt Sennett seine wissenschaftliche Disziplin, was
handwerklich gutes Schreiben ausmacht. Reflexionen über
schriftstellerische Fertigkeiten verbinden sich bei ihm mit
Analysen der umfassenderen Geschichte der Gesellschaft.
Entstanden ist ein sehr persönlicher Text, der eigene
Erfahrungen ebenso einschließt wie Bezüge auf
akademische und literarische Vorbilder.
Im Jahr 2008 hat Richard Sennett den Gerda Henkel Preis
erhalten, den die Gerda Henkel Stiftung in zweijährigem
Turnus für herausragende Forschungsleistungen auf dem
Gebiet der Historischen Geisteswissenschaften vergibt. Der
vorliegende Band enthält u.a. die Laudatio des
Germanisten Wolfgang Frühwald, der den
ungewöhnlichen Lebensweg des Soziologen und die
Konsequenzen für dessen Kritik an gegenwärtigen
Gesellschaftsformen schildert und auf den Stilisten Sennett
eingeht.
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Inhaltsverzeichnis:
Zum Geleit / Foreword Julia Schulz-Dornburg
Grußwort / Preface Annette Schavan
Begrüßung / Welcoming remarks Michael Hanssler
Bericht der Jury / Report of the Jury Ralf Dahrendorf
Laudatio / In honor of Richard Sennett Wolfgang Frühwald
How I write: Sociology as Literature /
Wie ich schreibe:
Soziologie als Literatur (Gerda Henkel
Vorlesung) Richard Sennett
Richard Sennett Vita, ausgewählte Publikationen /
Vita, Selected Publications
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Textauszug:
I want next, therefore, to talk about the craft of social
writing. What I'm going to describe to you are issues drawn
from my own experience - I certainly would not hold myself
up as a shining example of writing well, and certainly there
are many other solutions to the problems of expressive
writing than those I've found. But the problems themselves,
I would claim, are generic to socially minded literature.
...
Today, many social scientists are menaced by exclusion from
this public realm, due to their feeble powers of expression.
This feebleness is not simply a personal failing. The
history of academic institutions seeking to protect their
freedom, the specialization and bureaucratization of
knowledge, are general sources of intellectual isolation;
the feebleness of shared intelligence is but one tangible
result. The depth of what researchers know becomes
incommunicable, due to a lack of expressive tools; the
public is left with the husks, the surfaces of knowledge.
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All writing is political just in the way a writer relates to
readers. I've noted with dismay that when social scientists
attempt to address the general public, they tend to survey
and to simplify; that is, to talk down; that is, to
condescend. The reader is excluded from being a critical
partner in the writer's own thinking - whereas da las
Casas, Montesquieu, and Tocqueville treated their readers
more as equals. The politics of talking down to the reader
evinces also an error in the understanding of writing
itself.
...
Life histories and collective history do not possess this
literary property. Individual life-histories are often
incoherent, a jig-saw of parts which do not fit together;
collective histories may not accumulate in value. To give
you an example of each: Many of the workers I've interviewed
in the new economy have short-term jobs rather than
long-term careers, obliged to change what they do and where
they do it by global forces beyond their control. Though
they work very hard they lack a coherent narrative about the
work itself. Lack of accumulated meaning is something I
noted most recently in interviewing go-go financial
managers in New York; the collapse of firms like Long-Term
Capital Management a decade ago or the bursting of the
dot-com bubble a few years after has made little
impress on these managers, their behavior neither
conditioned nor conditioned by prior disasters - the
collective history did not accumulate in value.
...
I have tried to show, through these techniques of voicing,
narrating, stimulating curiosity, and symbol-making,
how the writing of social literature is a craft. As in any
other craft, inspiration is no guide, nor in this particular
craft will humanistic empathy suffice. The social writers I
particularly admire - Walter Benjamin, Roland
Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Michel de Certeau - write
quite differently from each other, yet all share an
essential ethos of craftsmanship. All established a set of
practices for their prose, but these practices evolved in
the course of their careers; they could be thus make
discoveries, rather than just demonstrate skill. All
craftsmanship should have that aspiration; good technique is
not a fixed, closed system.
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Videos:
Sie finden Live-Videos
des Vortrags von Richard Sennett wie auch der Laudatio von
Wolfgang Frühwald vom Abend der Verleihung des Gerda
Henkel Preises (10. November 2008) auf der Website der Gerda
Henkel Stiftung
[Klick zum Video].
Der Vortrag ist in englischer, die Laudatio in deutscher Sprache
You can watch live videos
of Richard Sennett's lecture as well as Wolfgang
Frühwald's speech in honor of Sennett from the evening
of the presentation of the Gerda Henkel Award (November 10,
2008) on the Gerda Henkel Foundation website
[click for the video].
The lecture is in English and the speech is in German.
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Zum Autor:
Geb. am 1. Januar 1943 in den USA; 1961 Studium an der
The Juilliard School of Music, New York; 1964
Bachelor of Arts (BA), University of Chicago,
Chicago; 1969 Promotion (PhD), Harvard University,
Cambridge, MA 1969-1974 Kodirektor des Cambridge
Institute, Direktor von The Urban Family Study,
The Cambridge Institute, Cambridge, MA; 1975-1984
Gründer und Direktor des New York Institute for the
Humanities; 1989-1993 Vorsitzender des Advisory
Committee on Cities, International Social Science
Council, Vorsitzender des International Committee on
Urban Studies der Vereinten Nationen des Development
Programme der UNESCO, seit 1998 Vorsitzender des Cities
Programme an der London School of Economics,
Professor für Soziologie und Kulturwissenschaften und
Akademischer Direktor an der London School of
Economics, Professor für Soziologie und Professor für
Geisteswissenschaften an der New York University,
Fellow des Council on Foreign Relations (USA), der
Royal Society of Arts (Großbritannien), der
European Academy, der American Academy of Arts and
Sciences, Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des
Lettres (Frankreich), Fellow der Royal Society of
Literature (Großbritannien)
Ausgewählte Publikationen:
The Fall of Public Man, New York: Knopf, 1974/1977.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977;
Authority, New York 1980. London: Secker and
Warburg, 1980;
The Conscience of the Eye. The Design and Social
Life of Cities, New York 1990. London: Faber and
Faber, 1991;
Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western
Civilization, New York - London 1994;
The Corrosion of Character: The Personal
Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism, New York - London
1998;
Respect in a World of Inequality, New York
2003;
The Culture of the New Capitalism, New Haven 2005;
The Craftsman, New Haven - London 2008.
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