The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity & City Life

Sennett brings his great erudition and keen insight to bear on the social psychology of life in wealthy suburbs. In the book's first half, he argues convincingly that the general prosperity that blossomed in America after WWII permitted people to retreat into 'counterfeit communities' in the suburbs, in which fear of the overwhelming diversity and disorder of urban life stunts suburbanites at an adolescent phase of personal growth, resulting in stultifying conformity, and confounding the possibility of personal growth and real communal life. In the second part, he comes up with a muddy and rather conflicted vision of a rebirth of city life based on a sort of half-anarchism not worthy of the name. His proposals, while showing a healthy respect for diversity and local control, would have benefited from a clearer understanding of the history of utopian anarchist thought. As it is, his description of anarchism as purely nihilistic and anti-urban is spotty and misleading, and his proposals lack clarity in their outcomes and implementations. For a more practical reformist proposal for the re-invigoration of urban community based partly on Sennett's critiques of suburbia, see Gerald Frug's excellent recent book 'City Making'. For clearer visions of possible anarchist societies, see the works of Kropotkin, Pannekoek, Murray Bookchin and Ken Knabb.