Thinking Allowed

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Thinking Allowed: Richard Sennett

Richard Sennett

BBC Radio 4 - Thinking Allowed, Richard Sennett

Richard Sennett: A conversation with a leading cultural and social thinker.

Richard Sennett: Laurie Taylor talks to a leading cultural and social thinker about his latest work on the power of performance, from music and politics to everyday life.

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

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