Richard Sennett

Thinking Allowed

BBC

Science, Society & Culture

4.4 • 973 Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Richard Sennett, leading cultural and social thinker and Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics, talks to Laurie Taylor. Growing up in a housing project in Chicago, he originally trained in music. An accident put paid to his cello playing and he turned to sociology. Over five decades he’s documented the social life of cities, work in modern society and the sociology of culture. His latest study explores the relations between performing in art (particularly music), politics and everyday experience. It draws personally on Sennett's early career as a professional cellist and explores the dangerous and ambiguous nature of performance, from the French theorist, Michel Foucault's hypnotic lectures to the demagoguery of contemporary politicians. He describes the tragic performances of unemployed dockworkers in New York City in the 1960s, as they competed for a dwindling number of jobs, and Aids patients in a Catholic hospital doing a reading of As You Like It and displaying defiance in the face of death and religious disapproval.

Producer: Jayne Egerton

Transcript

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0:00.0	Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of
0:07.0	Happiness Podcast.
0:08.0	For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want
0:14.4	to share that science with you.
0:16.1	And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley.
0:19.4	I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that
0:25.4	calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:30.3	BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts.
0:36.5	This is a Thinking Loud Podcasts from the BBC and for more details and much, much more about
0:42.3	thinking aloud, go to our website, the BBC. more details and much much more about thinking
0:42.7	allowed go to our website at BBC.co.uk.
0:47.3	Hello back in the 1970s I was a lecturer in sociology at the
0:52.2	University of York.
0:53.2	Now I thoroughly enjoyed the lecturing part of the job.
0:56.6	I mean to be able to sound off for an hour in front of a largely receptive audience
1:00.6	allowed me to feel I was introducing my listeners not just a key
1:04.3	sociological ideas but also to the manner in which the subject of sociology through
1:09.2	doubt on accepted beliefs about the nature of society the manner in which it
1:14.0	overturned common sense but seminars were an entirely different matter however
1:20.8	earnestly I tried to persuade by class of eight or nine students to think
1:24.9	sociologically, I found myself frustrated by their frequent recourse to personal
1:30.1	stories about their own life and times, stories about how they felt.
	...

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