How I write: Sociology as Literature

Weitere Informationen unter http://www.rhema-verlag.de/books/ghv_txt/sennett.html Alle Texte im Band sind abgedruckt in deutscher wie auch in englischer Sprache. Inhalt: Zum Geleit / Foreword Julia Schulz-Dornburg Grußwort / Preface Annette Schavan Begrüßung / Welcoming remarks Michael Hanssler Bericht der Jury / Report of the Jury Ralf Dahrendorf Laudatio / In honor of Richard Sennett Wolfgang Frühwald How I write: Sociology as Literature / Wie ich schreibe: Soziologie als Literatur (Gerda Henkel Vorlesung) Richard Sennett Richard Sennett Vita, ausgewählte Publikationen / Vita, Selected Publications Textauszug: . I want next, therefore, to talk about the craft of social writing. What I'm going to describe to you are issues drawn from my own experience - I certainly would not hold myself up as a shining example of writing well, and certainly there are many other solutions to the problems of expressive writing than those I've found. But the problems themselves, I would claim, are generic to socially minded literature. . Today, many social scientists are menaced by exclusion from this public realm, due to their feeble powers of expression. This feebleness is not simply a personal failing. The history of academic institutions seeking to protect their freedom, the specialization and bureaucratization of knowledge, are general sources of intellectual isolation; the feebleness of shared intelligence is but one tangible result. The depth of what researchers know becomes incommunicable, due to a lack of expressive tools; the public is left with the husks, the surfaces of knowledge.