The profound ambivalence that people feel is all the more understandable given the fundamental transformation that we are witnessing in the nature of capitalism, work, and the labor market. Sociologists like Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens have written extensively about the accelerated pace of social change in late modern societies. They emphasize the sharp decline in both the power and legitimacy of authoritative norms and institutions and the increasing uncertainty of all social arrangements. Both connect the sea change in how employees understand themselves and their work to these developments. However, it is Richard Sennett who most compellingly portrays the “short-term” temporal horizons that are the hallmark of the contemporary work experience.
In The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism, Sennett argues that the loss of the “long term” in the new capitalism is producing a crisis of character.45 In the old industrial economy, the possibility of sustained, predictable, usually lifetime engagement with a workplace was the bedrock of people’s identities—their “character.” Work provided status, dignity, and the opportunity for selfdevelopment. With its principle of “no long term,” however, the new, flexible capitalism has torn away the basis for the formation of sustaining identities, resulting in a growing malaise as people search in vain for a place to anchor a meaning for their lives. Modern work is fragmented, insecure, stressful, and unpredictable. Without the guarantees of lifetime employment and a steady-state career trajectory, workers have little incentive to be loyal to or trusting of their bosses, coworkers and corporate employers. Sennett diagnoses an increasingly lost workforce, unable to build the social relationships that lie at the heart of a fully developed, sustaining social identity.
Although this linear, predominantly male biography was never as standard as Sennett claims, it is true that the old contract between work and time has broken down.46 The historical trend of salaried work and socialized production has stalled. Occupations that extend over the whole of a work life are rare, and job tenure is shorter than it was a generation ago. Sennett’s account resonates strongly with those employed in professional and managerial jobs who have seen secure bureaucratic careers erode and the shift of market risks and responsibilities onto individuals themselves. Emblematic of this truncation of time spans is the spread of performance management systems, which audit individuals on current performance, without regard to a person’s history of efort. Such seismic shifts in the wider culture inform our overall sense that time is telescoping.
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