Respect in a World of Inequality or A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Respect in a World of Inequality

Author: Richard Sennett

The powerful case for a society of mutual respect.As various forms of social welfare were dismantled though the last decade of the twentieth century, many thinkers argued that human well-being was best served by a focus on potential, not need. Richard Sennett thinks differently. In this dazzling blend of personal memoir and reflective scholarship, he addresses need and social responsibility across the gulf of inequality. In the uncertain world of "flexible" social relationships, all are troubled by issues of respect: whether it is an employee stuck with insensitive management, a social worker trying to aid a resentful client, or a virtuoso artist and an accompanist aiming for a perfect duet. Opening with a memoir of growing up in Chicago's infamous Cabrini Green housing project, Richard Sennett looks at three factors that undermine mutual respect: unequal ability, adult dependency, and degrading forms of compassion. In contrast to current welfare "reforms," Sennett proposes a welfare system based on respect for those in need. He explores how self-worth can be nurtured in an unequal society (for example, through dedication to craft); how self-esteem must be balanced with feeling for others; and how mutual respect can forge bonds across the divide of inequality. Where erasing inequality was once the goal of social radicals, Sennett seeks a more humane meritocracy: a society that, while accepting inequalities of talent, seeks to nurture the best in all its members and to connect them strongly to one another.

About the Author:
: Richard Sennett teaches sociology at the London School of Economics and New York University.

Publishers Weekly

Novelist and sociologist Sennett (The Corrosion of Character) offers an unusual, well-intentioned, but frustratingly vague series of essays on fostering respect across barriers of social inequality. To tackle his subject, Sennett, who is affiliated with the London School of Economics and New York University, combines personal memoir, sociology, and deep reading in history and the social sciences. The first chapter is the best: a personal memoir of growing up poor and white in Chicago's Cabrini Green housing project, with a reminiscence of a "glass war," a game in which black and white children throw broken glass at each other; of becoming a proficient cello player only to lose his musical career to a hand injury; and of his early experiences as a sociologist. These stories vividly illustrate how difficult it is to respect oneself and others, particularly given race and class differences. But the rest of the book is too abstract and meandering to provide either sharp analysis or clear proposals. Sennett explores the meaning of the term "respect" and performs an inconclusive "inquest" on three ways of earning it: "make something of yourself, take care of yourself, help others." He argues against the current view that welfare bureaucracies should be dismantled and suggests ways in which the "relationship between society and character" might "lead people to treat each other with mutual respect." Throughout, Sennett's ideas seem tentative, in keeping with his stated view of this volume as an "experiment" providing neither "practical policies... nor a full-blown autobiography." The concluding section is headed "Instead of a Conclusion," and there are times when it seems he has written something instead of a book. Still, his efforts, while incomplete, succeed in provoking thought on a worthy subject. (Jan.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Interesting book: Wireless Network Security or The Volatility Machine

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Author: Mary Wollstonecraft

A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) is a work of crucial importance in intellectual history. Considered by most as Western feminism's central heroine, Wollstonecraft argues that women must be educated to develop their reason in order to throw off the frivolous, debilitating role of man's plaything. Rather than cultivating power from sexual allure, women should be honest, intelligent, and independent. Her concern about how women's innate worth is denigrated by improper definitions of the feminine in novels, in advice literature, and in educational systems has inspired women for over two centuries to contemplate the connections between power and femininity.

About the Author:
As a young woman Mary Wollstonecraft worked in most of the few acceptable occupations for genteel women: lady's companion, governess, seamstress, and schoolteacher. Unsatisfied by these conventional positions, Wollstonecraft carved out a career as a female polemicist, publishing in a wide range of genres: articles, reviews, novels, children's stories, educational tracts, histories, travel writing, and textbooks.

Table of Contents:

	Introduction
	Notes
	Select Bibliography
	Chronology
	Author's Introduction	1
	Dedicatory letter to M. Talleyrand-Perigord	7
I	The Rights and Involved Duties of Mankind Considered	13
II	The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed	21
III	The Same Subject Continued	41
IV	Observations on the State of Degradation to which Woman is Reduced by Various Causes	56
V	Animadversions on some of the Writers who have Rendered Women Objects of Pity, bordering on Contempt	84
VI	The Effect which an Early Association of Ideas has upon the Character	124
VII	Modesty--Comprehensively Considered, and not as a Sexual Virtue	131
VIII	Morality Undermined by Sexual Notions of the Importance of a Good Reputation	142
IX	Of the Pernicious Effects which Arise from the Unnatural Distinctions Established in Society	152
X	Parental Affection	163