The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life“[Sennett] has ended up writing the best available contemporary defense of anarchism. . . . The issues [he] raises are fundamental and profound. His book is utopian in the best sense—it tries to define a radically different future and to show that it could be constructed from the materials at hand.” –Kenneth Keniston, New York Times Book Review The distinguished social critic Richard Sennett here shows how the excessively ordered community freezes adults—both the young idealists and their security-oriented parents—into rigid attitudes that stifle personal growth. He argues that the accepted ideal of order generates patterns of behavior among the urban middle classes that are stultifying, narrow, and violence-prone. And he proposes a functioning city that can incorporate anarchy, diversity, and creative disorder to bring into being adults who can openly respond to and deal with the challenges of life. |
Contents
CHAPTER ONE Purified Identity | |
TWO The Myth of a Purified Community | |
THREE How Cities Bring the Myth to Life | |
CHAPTER FIVE Outgrowing a Purified Identity | |
SIX The Good Uses of the City | |
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Common terms and phrases
abundance activities adolescence adult adulthood affluent communities anarchic anarchist Anna Freud areas Baron Haussmann become believe bureaucracies character coherent complex conflict contact points create deal decentralized Denis de Rougemont dense desire for purity developed disorder diversity dreams economic emotional Erik Erikson ethics exist experience explore expression fact family members fear feeling force Franz Fanon freedom functional ghetto groups growth Haussmann Heinz Hartmann Herbert Marcuse hostile human idea ideal individual intense family involved Jane Jacobs kind large number leaders Lefrak City lives Louis Wirth machine means men’s middle-class myth neighborhood occurs one’s oneself order to survive painful past pattern peculiar planners planning police political possible problems purified identity Puritan racial integration relations repression responsibility revolutionary Richard Sennett routine sense slavery society strength structure suburban suburbs survival communities technological unknown urban violence Weber working-class young person