Authority

By Richard Sennett

Book Overview

A master of the interplay between politics and psychology, Richard Sennett here analyzes the nature, the role, and the faces of authority--authority in personal life, in the public realm, authority as an idea. Why have we become so afraid of authority? What real needs for authority do we have--for guidance, stability, images of strength? What happens when our fear of and our need for authority come into conflict? In exploring these questions, Sennett examines traditional forms of authority (The father's in the family, the lord's in society) and the dominant contemporary styles of authority, and he shows how our needs for, no less than our resistance to, authority have been shaped by history and culture, as well as by psychological disposition.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393310272
• ISBN13: 9780393310276
• Release Date: June 1993
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.56 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A seminal work

I can't say enough how much this book has been a source of insight to me. It is a serious work, but it is very well written and quite accessible.He explores in this book as he does in others, the hidden and emotional sides of social bonds. Our ambivalence about athorinty is the subject of the book. John Locke thought all we had to do was get rid of kings to be free, but Sennet and the rest of us know we are still not free. why?read this and start to at least ask some of the right questions.