Richard Sennett

He has been a Fellow of The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of the Royal Society of Literature. He is the founding director of the New York Institute for the Humanities.

Richard Sennett studied at Harvard University and University of Chicago. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is sociology. Hannah Arendt is recorded as an influence. Employment is recorded with London School of Economics and Political Science. Positions recorded include professor emeritus. Distinctions recorded are Guggenheim Fellowship, European handicraft prize, Gerda Henkel Prize and Hegel Prize.

• Name — Richard Sennett • Honorific Suffix — FRSL • Born — 1 January 1943 • Birthplace — Chicago, Illinois, US • Fields — Sociology • Academic Advisors — David Riesman, Erik Erikson, Oscar Handlin • Known for — Studies of social ties in cities

Sennett grew up in the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago, to a Jewish family of Russian emigres. As a child he trained in music, studying the cello. When a hand injury and botched operation to fix it ended his musical career, he entered academia. He studied under David Riesman, Erik Erikson, and Oscar Handlin at Harvard, graduating with his Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization in 1969. His intellectual life as an urbanist came into focus during the time he spent as a fellow of the Joint Center for Urban Studies of Harvard and MIT.

Sennett's scholarly writing centers on the development of cities, the nature of work in modern society, and the sociology of culture. Families Against the City, his earliest book, examines the relationship between family and work in 19th-century Chicago. A subsequent quartet of books explores urban life more largely: The Uses of Disorder, an essay on identity formation in cities; The Fall of Public Man, a history of public culture and public space, particularly in London, Paris, and New York in the 18th and 19th centuries; The Conscience of the Eye, a study of how Renaissance urban design passed into modern city planning, and Flesh and Stone, an overview of the design of cities from ancient to modern times. Another quartet of books is devoted to labor. The Hidden Injuries of Class is a study of class consciousness among working-class families in Boston; The Corrosion of Character explores how new forms of work are changing our communal and personal experience; Respect probes the relation of work and reforms of the welfare system; and The Culture of the New Capitalism provides an overview of these changes. Authority is an essay in political theory; it addresses the tools of interpretation by which we recast raw power into either legitimate or illegitimate authority. Sennett is working on a project called "Homo Faber", exploring material ways of making culture. The first book in this series is The Craftsman (2008); subsequent volumes are Together: The Rituals, Pleasures, and Politics of Cooperation (2012) and Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City (2018), on the making of the urban environment. In the public realm, Sennett founded, and for a decade directed, the New York Institute of the Humanities at New York University. He then chaired a United Nations commission on urban development and design. As president of the American Council on Work, Sennett led a forum, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, for researchers trying to understand the changing pattern of American labor. Most recently he helped create, and chaired, the LSE Cities Programme at the London School of Economics. The Urban Age project also emerged as a product of the research and ideas by Sennett and others at LSE Cities. In 2006, he chaired the jury at the Venice Biennale. In 2024, Sennett published The Performer: Art, Life, Politics, which is intended as "the first in a trilogy of books on the fundamental DNA of human expression: performing, narrating, and imaging." The Performer examines a wide range of human roles and interactions from nightclubs to political rallies throughout history to understand the role of performance in every human life.

Sennett has been married to sociologist Saskia Sassen since 1987.

• Nineteenth Century Cities: Essays in the New Urban History, coauthor, Yale (1969) • Classic Essays on the Culture of Cities, editor (1969), • The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life (1970), • Families Against the City: Middle Class Homes of Industrial Chicago, 1872–1890, Harvard (1970), • The Hidden Injuries of Class, with Jonathan Cobb, Knopf (1972), • The Fall of Public Man, Knopf (1977), • Authority (1980), • The Conscience of the Eye: The design and social life of cities, Faber and Faber (1991), • Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City In Western Civilization, Norton (1994), • The Corrosion of Character, The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism, Norton (1998), • Respect in a World of Inequality, Penguin (2003), • The Culture of the New Capitalism, Yale (2006), • The Craftsman, Allen Lane (2008), • The Foreigner: Two Essays on Exile, Notting Hill (2011), • Together: The Rituals, Pleasures, and Politics of Cooperation, Yale (2012), • Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2018), • The Quito Papers and the New Urban Agenda, Routledge (2018), • The Performer: Art, Life, Politics, Penguin (2024), Fiction • The Frog Who Dared to Croak (1982), • An Evening of Brahms (1984) • Palais-Royal (1986), Literature on Richard Sennett • Dominik Skala: Urbanität als Humanität. Anthropologie und Sozialethik im Stadtdenken Richard Sennetts. Paderborn: Schoeningh (2015), • Igor Pelgreffi: "Soggetto, tecnica, scrittura. Su How I write: Sociology as Literature di Richard Sennett ", in M. Iofrida (Eds) Officine Filosofiche, 2, Mucchi, Modena 2015, pp. 95–108 • Igor Pelgreffi: "Qualità artigianale del lavoro. Elementi per un'antropologia filosofica in Richard Sennett", in M. Iofrida (Eds) Officine Filosofiche, 3, Mucchi, Modena 2016, pp. 95–108

Richard Sennett worked in sociology. He was employed by London School of Economics and Political Science. Recorded position is professor emeritus. He belonged to Royal Society of Literature, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Academia Europea and Academia Europaea.