Richard Sennett

Richard Sennett is a sociologist and historian American, considered one of the most innovative and influential essayists of contemporary thought. His work focuses on the analysis of social life in cities, social bonds in the urban environment, the transformations of work and the effects of capitalism on current forms of life and culture.

He is currently an advisor to the United Nations Programme on Climate Change and Cities, a member of the Columbia University Center on Capitalism and Society and Visiting Professor of Urban Studies at MIT. He has also been a professor at New York University, where he founded the Institute of Humanities, and at the London School of Economics, where he is Professor Emeritus.

Among his most notable works on the city and urban life are Urban life and personal identity (2002), Building and living. Ethics for the city (2019) and Designing disorder (2021). In relation to contemporary capitalism and its effects, has published books such as The Culture of New Capitalism (2006), The Craftsman (2009) and Juntos (2012).

Received numerous awards and distinctions, including the Hegel Prize in 2006, the Gerda Henkel Prize in 2008 and the Spinoza Prize in 2010, as well as an honorary doctorate from the University of Cambridge and the Centennial Medal from Harvard University.

Featured works

The uses of disorder: Personal identity and life in the city. It is a fundamental text for understanding the influence that the spaces we inhabit have on our personal and social development, but above all for finding ways to escape their dangers by claiming the positive effects.

Building and living: ethics for the city. Rethinking the city is the objective of this book, which takes a journey through its evolution based on sociology and urban planning, and taking as a basis both the reflections of architects and urban planners and philosophers.

Public space. An open system, an unfinished process. In this book, Sennett points out that to do good planning of public space we should be creative and transgressive.