Richard Sennett: The Craftsman (2008)
Filed under book | Tags: · craft, hand, history, labour, machine, technology, work
“Craftsmanship, says Richard Sennett, names the basic human impulse to do a job well for its own sake, and good craftsmanship involves developing skills and focusing on the work rather than ourselves. The computer programmer, the doctor, the artist, and even the parent and citizen all engage in a craftsman’s work. In this thought-provoking book, Sennett explores the work of craftsmen past and present, identifies deep connections between material consciousness and ethical values, and challenges received ideas about what constitutes good work in today’s world.
The Craftsman engages the many dimensions of skill—from the technical demands to the obsessive energy required to do good work. Craftsmanship leads Sennett across time and space, from ancient Roman brickmakers to Renaissance goldsmiths to the printing presses of Enlightenment Paris and the factories of industrial London; in the modern world he explores what experiences of good work are shared by computer programmers, nurses and doctors, musicians, glassblowers, and cooks. Unique in the scope of his thinking, Sennett expands previous notions of crafts and craftsmen and apprises us of the surprising extent to which we can learn about ourselves through the labor of making physical things.”
Publisher Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2008
ISBN 0300149557, 9780300149555
326 pages
review (Lewis Hyde, The New York Times: Sunday Book Review)
review (Fiona MacCarthy, The Guardian)
Meta F. Janowitz, Diane Dallal (eds.): Tales of Gotham, Historical Archaeology, Ethnohistory and Microhistory of New York City (2013)
Filed under book | Tags: · 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, anthropology, archaeology, city, ethnoarchaeology, ethnography, history, new york
“Historical Archaeology and Ethnohistory of New York City: Tales and Microhistory of Gotham is a collection of narratives about people who lived in New York City during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, people whose lives archaeologists have encountered during excavations at sites where these people lived or worked. The stories are ethnohistorical or microhistorical studies created using archaeological and documentary data. As microhistories, they are concerned with particular people living at particular times in the past within the framework of world events.
The world events framework will be provided in short introductions to chapters grouped by time periods and themes. The foreword by Mary Beaudry and the afterword by LuAnne DeCunzo bookend the individual case studies and add theoretical weight to the volume. Topics in the book include:
– Native Americans and Europeans in New Amsterdam
– Stories of Dutch women in the colonial period
– African history in New York City, including the African Burial Ground
– Craftsmen and Churchmen of New York City
– A portrait of Stephen Allen, a New York City Mayor
Historical Archaeology and Ethnohistory of New York City: Tales and Microhistory of Gotham focuses on specific individual life stories, or stories of groups of people, as a way to present archaeological theory and research. Archaeologists work with material culture—artifacts—to recreate daily lives and study how culture works; this book is an example of how to do this in a way that can attract people interested in history as well as in anthropological theory. As such, this volume is an invaluable resource for archaeologists, historians, ethnographers, anthropologists, and anybody interested in the rich history of one of the world’s most influential cities, New York City.”
With a Foreword by Mary Beaudry
With an Afterword by LuAnne DeCunzo
Publisher Springer, London, 2013
ISBN 1461452716, 9781461452713
369 pages
Susan Buck-Morss: Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (2000–) [EN, ES, TR]
Filed under book | Tags: · freemasonry, history, philosophy, slavery
“In this path-breaking work, Susan Buck-Morss draws new connections between history, inequality, social conflict, and human emancipation. Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History offers a fundamental reinterpretation of Hegel’s master-slave dialectic and points to a way forward to free critical theoretical practice from the prison-house of its own debates. Historicizing the thought of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the actions taken in the Haitian Revolution, Buck-Morss examines the startling connections between the two and challenges us to widen the boundaries of our historical imagination. She finds that it is in the discontinuities of historical flow, the edges of human experience, and the unexpected linkages between cultures that the possibility to transcend limits is discovered. It is these flashes of clarity that open the potential for understanding in spite of cultural differences. What Buck-Morss proposes amounts to a ‘new humanism’, one that goes beyond the usual ideological implications of such a phrase to embrace a radical neutrality that insists on the permeability of the space between opposing sides and as it reaches for a common humanity.”
English edition
Publisher University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009
ISBN 0822973340, 9780822973348
164 pages
Hegel and Haiti (English, paper, Critical Inquiry, 2000, updated on 2019-12-3)
Hegel y Haití: La dialéctica amo-esclavo, una interpretación revolucionaria (Spanish, trans. Fermín Rodríguez, 2005)
Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (English, 2009, updated on 2019-12-3)
Hegel, Haiti ve Evrensel Tarih (Turkish, trans. Erkal Ünal, 2012, added on 2020-1-15)
Hegel, Haití y la historia universal (Spanish, trans. Juan Manuel Espinosa, 2013, added on 2020-1-15)