Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization

by Richard Sennett

Flesh and Stone is the story of the deepest parts of life—how women and men moved in public and private spaces, what they saw and heard, the smells that assailed them, where they ate, how they dressed, the mores of bathing and of making love—all in the architecture of stone and space from ancient Athens to modern New York.


Early in Flesh and Stone, Richard Sennett probes the ways in which the ancient Athenians experienced nakedness, and the relation of nakedness to the shape of the ancient city, its troubled politics, and the inequalities between men and women. The story then moves to Rome in the time of the Emperor Hadrian, exploring Roman beliefs in the geometrical perfection of the body.


The second part of the book examines how Christian beliefs about the body related to the Christian city—the Venetian ghetto, cloisters, and markets in Paris. The final part of Flesh and Stone deals with what happened to urban space as modern scientific understanding of the body cut free from pagan and Christian beliefs. Flesh and Stone makes sense of our constantly evolving urban living spaces, helping us to build a common home for the increased diversity of bodies that make up the modern city.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Architecture, Sociology, Philosophy, Cities, Urban Studies

432 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Richard Sennett has explored how individuals and groups make social and cultural sense of material facts -- about the cities in which they live and about the labour they do. He focuses on how people can become competent interpreters of their own experience, despite the obstacles society may put in their way. His research entails ethnography, history, and social theory. As a social analyst, Mr. Sennett continues the pragmatist tradition begun by William James and John Dewey.

His first book, The Uses of Disorder, [1970] looked at how personal identity takes form in the modern city. He then studied how working-class identities are shaped in modern society, in The Hidden Injuries of Class, written with Jonathan Cobb. [1972] A study of the public realm of cities, The Fall of Public Man, appeared in 1977; at the end of this decade of writing, Mr. Sennett sought to account the philosophic implications of this work in Authority [1980].

At this point he took a break from sociology, composing three novels: The Frog who Dared to Croak [1982], An Evening of Brahms [1984] and Palais Royal [1987]. He then returned to urban studies with two books, The Conscience of the Eye, [1990], a work focusing on urban design, and Flesh and Stone [1992], a general historical study of how bodily experience has been shaped by the evolution of cities.

In the mid 1990s, as the work-world of modern capitalism began to alter quickly and radically, Mr. Sennett began a project charting its personal consequences for workers, a project which has carried him up to the present day. The first of these studies, The Corrosion of Character, [1998] is an ethnographic account of how middle-level employees make sense of the “new economy.” The second in the series, Respect in a World of Inequality, [2002} charts the effects of new ways of working on the welfare state; a third, The Culture of the New Capitalism, [2006] provides an over-view of change. Most recently, Mr. Sennett has explored more positive aspects of labor in The Craftsman [2008], and in Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation [2012].

Reviews

[☘Misericordia☘ ⚡ϟ⚡⛈⚡☁ ❇️❤❣ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love the cover: a great example of the botched perspectiveworks in the MA painting and of charismatic characters depicted regardless of that issue. (Or maybe precisely because of it: because it lent to the figures an inflection allowing them to govern our perseption).

The book's quite meandering: we are enabled to look at different eras and ages and historical places in the quest to see how the urbanity rose. How gradually people built cities and everything they entail. How barter, trade, economy, conflict, wars and ecological issues became problems and what developments made them into what we can experience today.

I enjoyed the atmospheric writing a lot. A must reread.

[Beste Bal · Rating 5 out of 5]

kitabın hazırlıklarına Sennett ve Foucault birlikte girişmişler. eğer tamamlayabilselerdi elbette bambaşka bir kitap çıkardı ve ne muhteşem olurdu, fakat bu haliyle de oldukça zihin açıcı bir olmuş. elbette Sennett, ağırlığı 'şehir' üzerine çekmiş ama dilini bilenler için bu anlatısı oldukça farklı, kışkırtıcı, yeni bir görme biçimi. kent ve kentli ile derdi olanlar için kaçırılmaması gereken bir kitap. görsel açıdan da oldukça zengin olduğunu ekleyeyim.

[Guillermo · Rating 5 out of 5]

La historia de la ciudad occidental a través de la experiencia corporal de las personas. Atenas, Nueva York, París o Venecia. De los primeros cristianos a las fiestas revolucionarias francesas. La relación del cuerpo humano con su entorno construido.

Uno de los mejores ensayos que he leído en mucho, mucho tiempo.

[Elif Sena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elimde sürünen kitaplardan biri. sürünmesinin sebebi hem benim kitabı elime alamamam hem de kitabın dilinin sıkıcı olması. Bu sürünmeden kaynaklı kitabın başı ile bağım kopuk. Ama düzenli okumaya başladığım yerden itibaren kitabı okuyabildim. Okuru içine alamıyor bunu belirteyim. Fakat anlatılanlar dikkat çekici. beden ve şehir değişik ama iyi bir ikili.

Benim konuya özel merakım olması da anlatılanlara dikkat etmemi sağladı tabi ki. Konuya antik dönemden başlayıp günümüze kadar getirmesi baya öğretici. Aşama aşama nereden nereye gelindiğini öğreniyorsunuz. Görsellerle desteklenmiş ki bu okumayı ve anlamayı kolaylaştırıyor.

Metis kitap son zamanlarda çok kitabını okuduğım bir yayınevi. Çok kaliteli çeviriler yapıyorlar. Araştırma, inceleme kitapları okumak isteyenler bu yayınevinin kitaplarına bakabilir.

[K · Rating 2 out of 5]

For a book with a lot of interesting pieces, it's not particularly good as a whole. I found myself disagreeing with the author more and more as I continued, and then totally turned off by the end.

Quite simply, he didn't come close to making me agree with his premise -- to the extent he even had one -- that the modern city is built for transit and therefore turns people away from each other. I shouldn't say that I disagree with his premise, but rather that his examples didn't hold up and were not explained well. And I saw no coherence between the cities that he chose to use for his illustrations, especially when he picked the novel "Howard's End" as an example of some sort of alienation of the city that is solved when people live in close quarters and have disagreements with each other. The last sections of the book are by far the weakest.

Well, what did I like? I love Rome and Roman history, so that section was very good. He described places I've been, such as the Forum, and gave me greater depth of understanding about what was done there and why, and how people used the space. He did a good job on how a wealthy Roman lived at home as well. To a lesser extent, I got an understanding about both homes and public places in ancient Greece as well. I liked how he contrasted the use of space in Greece to bring people together in a democracy -- an amphitheater where they could hear a speaker and could all be seen when they voted -- and how that started out the same in Rome but was gradually whittled away as the empire became more autocratic.

The discussion of how a church is designed somewhat like a human body lying down was interesting as well. We know of the shape as recalling the cross on which Christ was killed, but this alternative idea is pretty interesting, and the author linked it to the hierarchy of church, state leaders, and other citizens.

But some of the leaps he tried to make just didn't work for me. I didn't write them down in detail, so this is a paraphrase that might not do full justice to his thinking. One was about how Christians were wanderers, like the Jews who were their forerunners, and that was a point of pride. They were not "of" a place, but "of" a belief system. But then when a Roman emperor converted, somehow Christians needed Rome to center their religion. The paradox was not well explained.

Similarly, there's a long chapter on the Jewish ghetto in Venice. The phenomenon that it was is worth discussing, as it was a cruel and radical reaction to the presence of others. The author doesn't do a particularly good job of showing why Jews were singled out in a city that had so much international traffic, and which based its wealth on the trade they brought. But regardless, the ghetto existed. For a couple of centuries, Jews were restricted at night to one part of one island in Venice (and a couple of outlying neighborhoods). They were literally locked in. But this author seems tone-deaf to the impact. He said it was good for Jews because it brought them closer together and allowed their culture to flourish. Hey, it already was flourishing there, as evidenced by the very few conversions to Catholicism that were recorded. And the author takes at face value the order that after the Jews were locked-in, they were charged for two night guards "to protect them," as if this wasn't a cynical political statement worthy of today's Republican Party on election reform. That statement was a lie, a further pouring of salt into a mortal wound. But this author thinks it was actually a good idea --- until he then says, uh, well whenever the mob got angry it could break in and destroy the ghetto anyway.

Near the end of the book, the author writes about his beloved Greenwich Village in NYC, where he apparently moved as a young professor. He describes the halycon days in the 1960s when folkies sang in Washington Square and things were at peace, at least on the surface. But at the same time he complains that people only cohabitated near each other, but didn't interact. As a person who lived in New York, I find this simply not true. Is everyone getting together for communal dinners? Of course not. But people interact while also going about their own lives. The author says that this seeing isn't good enough (he complains about Paris cafes with tables outside so you can see people walk by, because he thinks that watching people isn't good enough; you should be talking to them). But what's to lament about seeing people and having small interactions?

The author points out over and over that society has shifted to placing greater value on individualism. He claims that as national leaders saw the value of individualism rising, they made cities less accommodating for meeting, because it wasn't valued by the people, and because they feared the rise of the mob when people did meet. This was apparently the lesson of the French Revolution.

But I think he severely overstates. From what we know about Greece and Rome, individuals were celebrated. It was maybe the first time that civilizations had enough excess food and resources so that people could focus on their individuality as artists, poets, or just enjoying the leisure of public baths. The problem was that those individuals did it on the backs of the other 90% of the population, which was not a sustainable system.

Then Christianity comes along and tells everyone they have a relationship, a covenant with God. Individualism rises again -- ironically, given that the Church itself was all about giving up your individualism. And so on. Anyway, the author says that individualism is a bad thing, that much of what was good about ancient society was lost. He even says that central heating, as launched by Ben Franklin's stove in the 1740s, was a bad thing because people could be comfortable in their homes and didn't have to go out as much. Why is going out with other people better? Why is living in a ghetto better? Or living in squalor in Edwardian England, while the rich class lives in luxury?

The author ignores the gains, or underestimates the importance of them in pining for a time when, allegedly, people congregated to decide affairs, to share work, and to play. But I contend that we're just as able to do that now as in the past, but with the added benefit that we don't have to do it, that we can retreat to quiet and comfort, but venture out only when we wish.

One more complaint. Every example he uses is European. We have no idea if cultures in Asia, Africa, or the Tribal Nations of North America did things the same way. This author apparently doesn't think those are worth his study and analysis. I guarantee if he was writing the book in 2021, he wouldn't make this omission.

In short, this book does a pretty good job describing how rulers and citizens interacted in ancient Greece and Rome, and then in through the Early Middle Ages. But his big claims about what those interactions represent about that world, and how they are lost in ours, fall flat.

[Sra Amaglio · Rating 4 out of 5]

He aquí otro librazo al que he acabado maltratando por no leérmelo como dios manda. Resulta que me lo empecé a leer hace 2 años (lol), y recuerdo que tuve que coger algo de carrerilla para entrar en sintonía con semejante bloque de cemento intelectual. Denso de cojones pero igual de interesante: es un libro de historia que va visitando distintas civilizaciones explicando cómo la experiencia corporal de cada una moldeaba sus ciudades y urbanismo. Este señor consigue dibujar estupendamente el punto en el que se cruza el mundo de las ideas con su materialización (en forma de edificios y ciudades).

Creo recordar que me llamó especialmente la atención la antigua Grecia, asi como la idea de movimiento y velocidad pasivos de la era industrial, y la comodidad y descanso al servicio de la productividad (e insensibilidad). Luego dice algunas cosas sobre el deseo freudiano que me hubiera encantado entender la verdad.

Total, que como estaba diciendo, lo empecé hace dos años y justo cuando estaba en pleno apogeo disfrutón se me cayó detrás de la cama 5 meses (se conoce que asumí mi destino sin hacerme demasiadas preguntas) y perdí el momentum. He retomado las 150 últimas pags ahora porque soy una nostálgica pero no he conseguido volver a entrar en canción. Sin más. No tengo yo la neurona para ensayos ahora. Necesito una novela!!!!

[Sameth K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kitap antik Yunandan günümüz New York'unun banliyölerine kadar insanın beden imgesinin yapılar üzerine etkilerini irdeliyor. Ortaya konan yapıların ve inşa edilen meydanların aslında insan anatomisinin bir ürünü olduğunu, farklı coğrafyalarda hareket eden bedenlerin farklı yapılara ilham verdiğini açıklıyor.

Hareket eden beden, aktif bir yapıcıdır. Şehrin imarı ve dokusu hareket eden bedenlerin eseridir. Antik Yunanın agorası, Venedik'in gondolları, Paris'in meydanları bu bilinçli ve nasyonal hareketin malzemesinden yapılmıştır.

Bu örneklerden hareketle zihnimiz zorunlu olarak İstanbul'un şehir yapısını ve üzerinde yaşayan bedenleri düşünür ve buna kafa yorar. İstanbul bir metropol olarak artık herkesin birbiriyle çarpıştığı, devasa bir metrobüsü andırır. Belli semtler dışında artık özensiz insanlar yaşar bu şehirde ve tıpkı acele eden bedenleri gibi yapıları da basit, tekdüze, iç sıkıcıdır. Bilhassa geçen yirmi yıla baktığımızda kentin insan yapısı kozmopolitleşip yabancılaşırken inşa edilen yapıların matematiği şöyle dursun, bir tren vagonu gibi sıralı ve şekilsiz, ruhsuz dikdörtgenlerin varlığı, tartışılmaz bir gerçek olmuştur.

Kitabın en iyi kazanımlarından biri hiç şüphesiz bir kentin dokusu üzerine düşünmek ve sosyolojik olarak bir farkındalık yaratmaktır.

[Sophy H · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

This one has been a bedside "slow burner" (as in I've read a few pages or a chapter at a time just before sleeping, over the course of the past few months).

The premise for the book is interesting, the interaction of body and surroundings, their influence upon each other, and the representation of the human body within architecture/nature/culture. The book itself however can feel slow and tedious in parts, and at times overbearing with religious referencing and historical minutiae.

There are parts that are truly great and parts that are sloooooooow!

Chapters of particular interest to me were Fear of Touching: The Jewish Ghetto in Renaissance Venice, The Body Set Free: Boullee's Paris, and Civic Bodies: Multi-Cultural New York.

The rest were just so so.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sennett makes a good case for seeing architecture as a social medium. His stories justify his theory. i heard an interview with Sennett on the CBC's Ideas program and he comes across as a writer truly interested in the human condition - we are who we are but what we build. Good read.

[David Bird · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book a grave disappointment, with little substance, and much theory and self-satisfaction.

[0:50 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Flesh and Stone is a patchy, impressionistic detour of historical snapshots related to the concepts of city and place. It is structured into chapters about particular locations in particular eras, meaning that it leaps from city to city between chapters. This means that the book is somewhat discontinuous by design: this manner of presentation may have its charms, but its drawback is that every chapter must start over from the background of the subject of that chapter. While you won't get a sense of smoothly continuous accumulation of narrative detail, as with more clearly focused historical works, you do get some degree of thematic cross-referencing. Still, in my opinion there could've been more attempt to unify the work; as it stands, the experience of having to repeatedly re-insert yourself to every chapter from the beginning in terms of the necessary factual background makes the experience of reading this draining at times.

My quibbling with the format is not to imply that I would recommend against reading it even if in addition to the form, one could say that the argumentative content of the book is somewhat lax, as some reviewers have pointed out. This is a fair assessment but despite it I found some interesting information in this book as well. If one is left unpersuaded about some of the broader brush-strokes Sennett makes here, he does nonetheless manage to bring forward an array of highly intriguing facts which can be incorporated to the reader's knowledge base with fruitful results. The issue of over-fitting always looms large with historical works focusing on a specific theme and issues like whether some of the artworks he presents in support of his views are as emblematic as he claims are left for the reader to estimate in terms of his existing interpretive framework.

Flesh and Stone is concerned with how crowds relate to each other in urban spaces. Sennett does often diverge from urbanism to explorations of particular objects or symbolisms in a somewhat freewheeling fashion but basically the work always returns to the idea of urban planning. He strongly associates urban constructions with scientific conceptions of the human body during the era at hand, though there are exceptions such as the chaotic nature of the medieval city that reflected moreso the near-anarchic explosion of commerce during that era. While the book may lack a clear central thesis, as some reviewers noted, a hidden theme emerges from the comparison between the medieval age city and the examples surrounding it temporally. It provides a strikingly impressionistic view on the development of European civilization as a chaotic process that was, in Thomas Hobbes' words, nasty and brutish, if not that short. The cloistral serenity of melancholy stands in symbiosis with the crime-ridden streets of commercial cities, seemingly in state of a constant haggle for rights of territory. Roman advances in sanitary engineering were tragically forgotten, in defiance of the concept of linear historical or technological progress. One can't help but think of Bertrand Russell's idea that the neatness and even fastidiousness typical of medieval philosophy was an understandable response to disorderly and forbidding states of affairs. Order and anarchy intermingle with productive results.

The contrast between the Romans and the Greeks, while not as striking, is also insightful. For starters, it is noteworthy that Greeks did not enjoy public displays of death, executions were not public spectacles and they had a particular horror of the dead based on a notion of ghosts. This is markedly different from the Romans famous for gladiator spectacles that apparently involved obsessive repetitions of mythic themes; something to keep in mind upon a reading of Ovid's Metamorphoses, perhaps. This tendency continued to medieval era where corpses could be found littering the streets of the chaotic cities and public executions were common-place. While people often make a big fuss out of the bloodbaths of the French Revolution, they seem to have been noteworthy more on account of a kind of rationalization and mechanization of death with painless, scientific instrument like guillotine, in contrast to performative tortures common in the kingdom of France.

Generally, Romans' world-view struck me as somewhat gloomier than that of the Greeks': while Greeks thought of strength as a positive quality of body heat lacking in females and people that stay indoors, leading to a kind of cult of openness and transparency even in voting, Sennett associates Roman conception of strength with the idea of gravitas, with all its weighty connotations. Greeks were highly concerned with the use of human voice while Romans invented elaborate gestural patterns to convey everything from rank to intention; Romans obsessed over repetitive geometrical patterns and actively wished to imprint that model on the areas they conquered, while Greeks advocated for clear, visible open, exposed characteristics and conquered more for slaves and resources without any question of making the conquered people "Athenians". Romans seemingly had more of a knack for interior design based on the bilateral body plan of humans and on a hierarchical idea of "command to look": this was repeated in the plans of the city. It was as if Romans were obsessed with repeating and reproducing abstractions: metaphorical myths repeatedly enacted in Gladiator arenas, repeated series of gestures, repeating city plan imprinted on all conquered land. Sennett points out that Romans saw the world as a kind of teatrum mundum, that is, a worldly theatre of performances and lay-outs; a veritable universe of signs which aligns with the increased emphasis put on fortune by Romans.

Greek cult of the body heat seemed to have given way to something much more cool and calculated: is it too much to suggest that Greeks would have considered Roman habits as effeminate? It is interesting that while in some respects Roman society became more cruel with its gladiator performances, it was actually somewhat less hierarchical than an Athenian polis in that slaves had possibilities of advancing in society and women's position was much improved. A related distinction may be helpful in elucidating this: Greeks' horror of the underworld was seemingly transformed from the realm of obscure mystery cults to a veritable centre of Roman metaphysics, seeing as they propitiated a conquest of a city by digging a pit representing a passage to the underworld to the centre of the city layout and by gifting food to the chthonic gods. This ritual was inheritance from Etruscan times where women enjoyed much better status than in Greece. It was surprising to me that this was so central, another one of their obsessive repetitions: but the focus on the chthonic might serve to explain the slightly more mysterious and colder focus on signs and facades when compared with the sun-loving openness of an Athenian citizen. The straightforward, vitalist honour morality of Greek society, where intellectual culture evolved as a tangent of wrestling, was replaced with interpretation and repetition, emphasizing cognitive ideals over the heat of the dialectic. Geometry was a magical formula to be repeated and re-encountered, not a physically heated discovery: obsession with clear structure co-existed with a more lax hierarchy (illicit children could become citizens in Rome) and increasingly ritualized cruelty - not as sacrifice to venerable spirits, but as a mythical theme made real in the context of performance.

Described this way, the continuum between Romans and Christians does not appear quite as abyssal as it does when it leads to Nietzsche's formulation of Christianity relating to whatever is "of the lowest orders, the underworld of the ancient world". We see that he is thinking about Christianity in relation to how it would have seemed to Athenian polis in its golden age but with Romans, the underworld is already a central, respected part of the cult. In many ways, the clear hierarchy of Greece has weakened and even children of mothers are admitted as citizens while in a Greek polis they would have been slaves. Nonetheless, Christianity arises as a counter-reaction to Roman values precisely in its denial of everything that is teatrum mundi: apparently Romans raised the esoteric gesticulations and significations to such a pitch of inanity that even many well-off Romans got tired of all this curiositas. In place of a plurality of signs, Christianity recommends light, a condition of all seeing: this happens through the alien body of Christ whose experience can only be approximated through sensations approximating nothingness. It seems that the Nietzschean assignation of nihilism to Christianity finds a closer correlate in the early Christianity: this is also interesting because nihilism entered European discourse out of left-field, from Russian tradition, based on Orthodox thought that possibly clung closer to this idea (considering some Orthodox critiques of Thomas à Kempis' work) in comparison with the later European medieval idea of Imitation of Christ which completely reverses the idea of Christ as an alien body, something that was crucial in differentiating Christianity from, for example, cults of Osiris. The idea of nihilism as something around which we must build discourse could be a radical return of a seed of original Christianity: and parts of Nietzsche's Antichrist could even be read as affirmations of Catholicism over Orthodox Christianity.

With the imperialization of Christianity, Sennett notes that Christ became dualized between Christ The King and Christ the Martyr, latter of whom had a separate place of worship, martyrium. Catholicism developed in tandem with the development of commerce-based cities in Europe, offering a framework for settling disputes and upholding contracts. Sennett focuses on the rise of the movement of Affective Piety as well as Imitation of Christ - these may be interpreted as reactions to the excessive thoughtlessness and brutality of the world controlled by combative economy and warring feudal lords, with little of the imperial cohesion that persisted in Byzantine Empire. One gets the sense that Europe was abandoned to the forces of Chaos. The idea of Imitation of Christ, and the sentimentalism that came along with it, seems like a natural extension to the melancholic contemplation at cloisters. The valorisation of simplicity and poverty by the likes of St. Francis of Assisi made a powerful counter-point against pretentiousness and curiositas but they also seem to commit the heresy of attempting to imitate an alien body, Godly body, incomprehensible to us. How could we say that our experience of poverty is the same thing which the embodiment of God experienced? Could our chosen stances and positions really begin to compare? And how could we imitate Christ when none of our actions can absolve the sins of humankind, rendering them massively pathetic in comparison?

The Franciscan pose ends up faced with an admission of its own pretence but that does not stop it from being massively influential to the concept of pity which became important to medieval body politic. Sennett observes that medieval doctors conceived of pity based on the practice of surgery where the flow of blood to wounded organs metaphorically implied reactions of pity on part of the other organs. Developed further in Enlightenment by circulatory body politics of economic science, this idea nonetheless showed the influence of commercial activity in medieval society. It was a far cry from Galen's concept of pity as a sick state corresponding to black bile, an obvious influence on Nietzsche's criticisms. Indeed, if Romans displayed signs of nocturnal morbidity and loosening of hierarchies, how much more so the medieval city that was comprised by the types of people that would never have gotten citizenship status in an Athenian polis: merchants and laborers. The feudal lords were consigned to the rural areas like slaves and the urban environment, so venerated by the Athenians as a proper healthy way of being in touch with other men of leisure, was instead a chaotic pigswill full of ONLY rejects. This environment by itself was pitiless and the reaction of the Franciscans was empathy, caritas. Christianity functioned on one hand through performances of charity and zones of grace such as cloisters but on the other hand it established itself as a managerial-bureaucratic body that controlled the economic chaos and rising guilds through legal frameworks.

Guilds were established quickly after people realised free market does not work, a fact whose forgetting in today's rhetoric marks a civilisational lapse on the level of the decline of sanitation. Sennett observes that there were even standardized bread loaves, sometimes considered to be exclusive to the horrors of modern EU technocracy. The beginning of modern politics is tied to a deepening bureucratization of guilds to the point that they rival the church: once guilds are set up, you end up needing an internal body that makes sure that everyone plays by the rules and this level of activity already becomes one level removed from pure economic association, establishing a political logic. Sennett shows how the chaotic forces of economics destabilize the legal assumptions of space and time: labour chops up time to discrete units detached from either celestial observations or biblical narrativity; economic pursuit destabilizes the fixity of "place" to the neutrality of abstract space that was subject to violent changes in the tussle of economic pursuit and negotiation.

The time period preceding French Revolution saw a return to Roman chthonic metaphysics with a re-establishment of sewers and a greater emphasis on clean, geometrical city structures. Glorious Revolution saw nobles re-asserting themselves against the Catholics via constitutionalism and Montesquieu, a noble, invented the idea of separation of powers to militate against the kings and masses. This pattern was also latched on to by organizations that developed from earlier guilds like Freemasons in the French Revolution so that in the history of the West we have a kind of slight alliance of metics and nobles against the slaves that kickstarted liberalism. At this point the nonsensical ideas of hidden hand start being pushed upon the slave populace that becomes cut off from even understanding what is going on. Free market becomes conceived as autonomous and body-politic turns masturbatory in a Rousseauian sense: market becomes a field of individualization through specialization, distinct from the legal idea of the individual. Female idols are re-instated to signify a combination of nurture and authority that cannot be argued against it rationally: another Hellenic return to cults of Ceres and Athena, to glorification of what is pushed underground, to the logic of sewers. Sennett pays attention to the strange fact that milk, suddenly, becomes hugely important, not least due to Rousseau's propaganda of Sophie's Primitive Titty in opposition to Juliette-like perversions of Marie-Antoinette: this can easily be interpreted as the educational infantilization of a populace. "I only know that I know nothing".

Hellenic slave society reinstated through obscurity, the world turns drab and colourless, as Sennett notes with his observations of the near-industrialized nature of guillotines and the drab vacuums of the famous paintings of the sacrificial victims of that era. The book gets vastly less interesting the more modern it gets but connecting the dots, it is easy to find here more evidence of the Hellenic character of the modern world, in an inverted form, with many twists. Perhaps one of the most useful connections that can be found here is that empathy, the heretical Imitation of Christ, is a reaction against the dominance of those who never counted for citizens in Greece.

[Enda KESIM · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mekanları, şehirleri, yaşam tarzlarını bir tarihsel dizgi içinde insan bedeni ve alışkanlıkları ile ilişkilendirerek anlatan harika bir kitap. Tarih seviyorsanız kesinlikle tavsiye..

[Pablo Aguirre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excelente libro para aquellos interesados en saber como nacen las ciudades y sus componentes. Es interesante como muestra el cuerpo y la ciudad mezclados, en el nacimiento de distintos hábitos que iremos construyendo en las ciudades. Es llamativo también el origen de ejemplos como la ciudad de París y sus cambios. Es entretenido observar el avance del paisajismo y el nacimiento de las grandes ciudades.

[Khitkhite Buri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sennett's grand at plotting organizational politics around metaphors, and there's a largess to his writing that probably attests to the later writings on the open city.
There's something new, something old and a lot borrowed in this book - it's like listening to stories told by your classmate's talkative grandmother because everyone else is talking about the weather or puppies. Somehow things look a little different and a little quirkier when you leave, but nothing really changes.

[Rodrigo Vidal]

La metodología del autor es brillante. Nada más que decir, capaz de realizar vinculaciones entre la concepción de ser humano y el uso del espacio desde un punto de vista sexual. ¿Qué más esperar si trabajó con Foucault en "Sexuality and soolitude"?

[Eleanor · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really really enjoying this book, very entertaining, extremely well-researched and informative. However, it completely tanked my opinion of it when it referred to a female literary character as 'sluttish'. No need for it, disappointing and derrogitory.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that will stay with you for life. Superb!

[Stefan · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of these pre-internet books in which connecting dots (which book won't miss to put in connect of λόγος (logos)) along theme picked by author(s) would keep you entertained over a evening or two. Here, Sennett presents his (based / influenced by his earlier work with Foucault) meandering sociology thoughts in the riverbed made of stone and sens|xuality (the flesh in the title). The book is still thought-provoking, all these years since, and rather depressing, i.e., Sennett points out that with comfort and modern city, we achieved isolation, not necessarily autonomy, rather separation, solitariness.. Some reductionism is tad annoying, as is sexualised reportage of female celebrations (lacking niuanse, depth, imho in a way exposing male prejudice still alife with NY/London city dweller of mid-90s).
Nonetheless, worthy a read.. onwards to other Sennett works as with isn't quite good writer able to convey ideas, reader just need to be careful so the apparent emergence isn't taken for truth. Part of the great puzzle, each critical thinking inducing read is 😉

[Pablo Gaona Olivares · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want to understand how history built our cities give it a chance.
How the greek religion and filosophy built their agoras
How the roman hunger made them create the best city at that point of time and they built such an empire
Why the cristiasim change the way of thinking
How the new economy transform all of our daily habits

With this you will learn a lot that's for sure

Everything was looking great untill the author mess up in the last couple of chapters trying to focus all the last analysis on his point, the lack of religious faith.

I am really disappointed because I was really learning with the book but that ending and, in my opinion, the fact that he doesn't really give any solid conclusion or advice for future profesionals makes it only a 4 stars book.

The author does a great job explaning on the first few chapters of the book how different the way of thinking was at some points of the history. And probably every architect or urban planner should read it

[Carlos B.]

He leído 50 páginas y, la verdad, no me apetece nada continuar. El autor defiende una hipótesis que no compro del todo: las ciudades modernas no tienen en cuenta al individuo y estamos cada vez más atomizados. Pero esto no es nuevo, si no que siempre ha pasado. Para argumentarlo hace un repaso de varias ciudades occidentales a lo largo de la historia. En concreto la Atenas y Roma clásicas, la Venecia del Renacimiento, el París y el Londres imperial, y el Nueva York moderno (años 90). Nos explica cómo eran estas ciudades y cómo entendían esas culturas el cuerpo humano.

Igual en otro momento me apetecería más leer un ensayo de 400 páginas sobre este recorrido histórico pero tras leer sobre la Atenas de Pericles, las relaciones varoniles de los griegos o cómo relacionaban el calor (hombre, vitalidad, fuerza) y el frío (mujer, esclavo, pasividad) del cuerpo me he dado cuenta que hay lecturas pendientes en mi lista que me apetecen mucho más.

[Ang · Rating 3 out of 5]

Contents:
-Introduction: Body and City
-Chapter One: Nakedness: The Citizen's Body in Perikles' Athens
-Chapter Two: The Cloak of Darkness: The Protections of Ritual in Athens
-Chapter Three: The Obsessive Image: Place and Time in Hadrian's Rome
-Chapter Four: Time in the Body: Early Christians in Rome
-Chapter Five: Community: The Paris of Jehan de Chelles
-Chapter Six: "Each Man Is a Devil to Himself": The Paris of Humbert de Romans
-Chapter Seven: Fear of Touching: The Jewish Ghetto in Renaissance Venice
-Chapter Eight: Moving Bodies: Harvey's Revolution
-Chapter Nine: The Body Set Free: Boullee's Paris
-Chapter Ten: Urban Individualism: E. M. Forster's London
-Conclusion: Civic Bodies: Multi-Cultural New York

[H. Isikgun · Rating 5 out of 5]

İnsanın beden üzerindeki düşüncelerinin, geleneklerinin ve bilimin, yaşanılan çevreyi nasıl oluşturduğuna ve değiştirdiğine dair olağanüstü bir yapıt.

Antik dönemin yüce olanı yansıtma ve içkinleme kaygısından, modern dönemin tekinsiz mimarisinin ten ile kutuplaşmasına kadar birçok farklı perspektif oldukça etkileyici bir sade dil ve görsellikle anlatılmış. Ayrıca Tuncay Birkan çevirisi de bir o kadar övgüye layık. Kullanılan kelimelerin zenginliği ve çevirinin akıcılığı okumayı bir hayli keyifli hale getiriyor.

[Rafa González · Rating 4 out of 5]

lo acabo de terminar ! me ha gustado mucho, mucho mucho aprendizaje de tantas cosas desde el calor de las palabras hasta la tramposa comodidad de las sillas decimonónicas, todo muy muy chulo; una historia del cuerpo desde coordenadas cristianas y que reflexiona sobre la ambivalencia del placer y de sus efectos sobre nosotros.....de todas formas se me ha hecho un poco largo y no todas las partes me han parecido igualmente fascinantes......aunque probablemente eso diga más de mí que del libro

[Luiza · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was one of the best surprises that the architecture degree made me read.
I love it how he explains how the way people understand there bodies e there relationships define the way the build and plan their cities.

[SirriCan · Rating 4 out of 5]

referans kitap.

[Alvaro Arcos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Es una mezcla perfecta para entender el desarrollo urbano y arquitectónico, mirándolo a través de la historia del ojo tanto de la piedra (la parte física) y la carne (el urbanita).

[Kacper · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5

[HongSeok Choi · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is one of the astonishing books to learn how the shape of the cities has developed and what ideologies have affected to the undetstanding of human lifes

[Arisoc · Rating 5 out of 5]

recomiendo la conferencia de carlos niño murcia sobre este libro que hay en yutub, es casi mejor que el libro.
merece la pena leerse esto solo por el capítulo dedicado a Venecia

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richard Sennett deftly tackles a topic of considerable breadth in "Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization". Using primary and secondary sources, fiction and art, Sennett examines six cities at various historical moments in order to explore the development of the relationship between cities and the bodies of their residents. He identifies attitudes toward the self and the Other, towards comfort and pain, that manifest themselves in western urban culture and spaces and, in turn, which act upon the human body dwelling in such spaces. Sennett employs theory from a number of disciplines, including history, sociology, urban development, psychology, economics and cultural anthropology. The latter is used in a way reminiscent of Greg Dening in "The Death of William Gooch", where Dening successfully presented western culture as "other" to a western audience; Sennett performs a similar feat by objectifying the stage itself upon which western culture has been enacted - the city. Urban spaces, and how we feel as bodies living in and moving through them, seem strange and manufactured - which they are. We are simply used to cities and how we feel in cities and, so, naturalize them to a certain extent. Sennett erases this naturalization and we see urban space not as an inert backdrop against which we move or as a mere product of human will or design, but as a dynamic organism that has the capability of acting on our bodies even as we act upon it, and of creating our understanding of ourselves in relation to it. The city makes and is made, just as we make and are made. The generative power at play in the relationship between a city and its residents flows both ways.

Sennett examines Athens of the Fifth Century B.C., Rome of the Second Century A.D., thirteenth-century Paris, the Jewish Ghetto in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Venice, revolutionary Paris, nineteenth-century London and modern New York. Throughout his exploration, Sennett ties developments in western urban life to then contemporary understandings of the body and its processes. For example, he links William Harvey's seventeenth-century discovery of the circulation of blood through the human body with a new focus in urban planning on motion through the city's veins and arteries and the desire to make human movement easy and unobstructed. For Sennett, this impulse to free the human body relates directly to other modern conveniences, like television and automobiles, that end up instead imprisoning the body in a non-sensing bubble.

In fact, Sennett identifies this trend toward ease, comfort and lack of obstruction as one of the primary ramifications of how western cities have developed. For Sennett, ease and comfort pacify the body and desensitize the individual to their connection with others. The individual becomes a self-contained, disconnected unit moving through the city, claiming her right not to be interfered with and, thereby, isolating herself from society as a whole. The individual in this scenario loses her sense of sharing a common interest with the individuals around her. Sennett asserts that western civilization's historical drive toward personal freedom (especially in one's physical life) has actually culminated in passive bodies rather than active ones, in sterile spaces rather than lively ones. These isolated individuals in the modern western city feel, as Alexis de Tocqueville observed, "strangers to the destinies of each other".

Essentially, difference and human social friction constitute, for Sennett, true freedom; the freedom to act, to work out differences, to really experience the Other. In many ways, Sennett's meditation on the city and bodies is really a plea to reconnect, to tolerate and even invite difference. He writes:

"Lurking in the civic problems of the multi-cultural city is the moral difficulty of arousing sympathy for those who are Other. And this can only occur, I believe, by understanding why bodily pain requires a place in which it can be acknowledged, and in which its transcendent origins become visible. Such pain has a trajectory in human experience. It disorients and makes incomplete the self, defeats the desire for coherence; the body accepting pain is ready to become a civic body, sensible to the pain of another person, pains present together on the street, at last endurable - even though, in a diverse world, each person cannot explain what he or she is feeling, who he or she is, to the other. But the body can follow this civic trajectory only if it acknowledges that there is no remedy for its sufferings in the contrivings of society, that its unhappiness has come from elsewhere, that its pain derives from God's command to live together as exiles."