THE AUTHORITY

Richard Sennett is a master of the interplay between politics and sociology. In AUTHORITY, Sennett draws connections with psychology to investigate the construction of the concept of authority throughout history and analyze the nature, role, and various faces of authority in personal life and in the public arena. By examining questions such as the origins of the fear of authority; the real needs for patterns of strength, guidance, and stability; and the results of the conflict between fear and the need for images of strength, Sennett ultimately examines traditional forms of authority—such as that of the family man and the great lord in society—and their dominant contemporary styles. He investigates the fear of authority, the archetypes that inspire it, and explores the best images of authority that should exist within our horizons. AUTHORITY shows that both our needs for authority and our resistance to it have been shaped by history and culture, as well as by psychological predisposition. Sennett explores the links established by the revolt against authority in this engaging study of our coexistence with figures of power. It reveals how the paradoxes of these relationships have been developing since the French Revolution and how they are expressed today in offices, factories, and government, as well as in the family and interpersonal relationships. Drawing on examples drawn from psychology, sociology, and literature, Sennett projects in AUTHORITY an eloquent way of how we might reinvigorate the role of authority, in accordance with constructive and rational ideals. Richard Sennett, born in Chicago in 1943, professor of sociology at the London School of Economics, is the author of Flesh and Stone and The Corrosion of Character, both published by Record. The Decline of Public Man and The Hidden Injuries of Class (with Jonathan Cobb) are among his works. "Precise and far-reaching. Sennett's style is admirable." The New Yorker