Sennett Richard. Respect in a World of Inequality

W. W. Norton, 2003. — 209 р. — ISBN: 978-0-393-07977-7Several years ago I wrote a book about work, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism, and I’d meant this book to be a companion volume about welfare. Welfare clients often complain of being treated without respect. But the lack of respect they experience occurs not simply because they are poor, old, or sick. Modern society lacks positive expressions of respect and recognition for others.
To be sure, society has a master idea: it is that by treating one another as equals we affirm mutual respect. However, can we only respect people who are equal in strength to ourselves? Some inequalities are arbitrary but others are intractable—such as differences of talent. People in modern society generally fail to convey mutual regard and recognition across these boundaries.
The hard counsel of equality comes home to people within the welfare system when they feel their own claims to the attention of others lie solely in their problems, in the facts of their neediness. To earn respect, they must not be weak; they must not be needy.
When welfare clients are urged to “earn” self-respect, this usually means becoming materially self-sufficient. But in the larger society self-respect depends not only on economic standing, but on what one does, how one achieves it. Self-respect cannot be “earned” in quite the same way people earn money. And again inequality intrudes; someone at the bottom of the social order can achieve self-respect but its possession is fragile.
The relation between respect and inequality has become my theme. As I began writing out my thoughts, I realized how much it has shaped my own life. I grew up in the welfare system, then escaped from it by virtue of my talents. I hadn’t lost respect for those I’d left behind, but my own sense of self-worth lay in the way I’d left them behind. So I was hardly a neutral observer; were I to write an honest book on this subject I would have to write in part from my own experience. Much as I like reading memoirs by others, however, I dislike personal confession.