Thinking about the city, social movements, and education: contributions of Richard Sennett

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a theoretical study made from the recent works of the North American sociologist Richard Sennett. In his trilogy linked to the Homo Faber Project, the author presents three concepts: craft as a making-thinking; cooperation as a necessity to review social and political relations; connections between build and dwell. The articulation of these concepts from the perspective of open systems with an emphasis on participation and complexity may indicate other ways of seeing, living, and dwelling in the world that are the most creative, empathic, plural, strange and curious as possible. An ethic in which inclusion and respect are fundamental attitudes so it is possible to be and to live both in cities, schools, or social movements.

Keywords:
Education; City; Teaching

RESUMO

Este artigo apresenta um estudo teórico realizado a partir de obras recentes do sociólogo norte-americano Richard Sennett. Em sua trilogia, vinculada ao Projeto Homo Faber, o autor apresenta três conceitos: artesania como um fazer-pensar; cooperação como uma necessidade para rever as relações sociais e políticas; conexões entre construir e habitar. A articulação desses conceitos na perspectiva dos sistemas abertos com ênfase na participação e complexidade pode indicar outros modos de ver, viver e habitar o mundo que sejam mais criativos, empáticos, plurais, estranhos, curiosos e possíveis. Uma ética na qual a inclusão e o respeito são atitudes fundamentais para poder estar e viver seja nas cidades, nas escolas ou nos movimentos sociais.

Palavras-chave:
Educação; Cidade; Docência

Introduction

This article proposes the articulation of the themes researched and deepened by Richard Sennett in his last trilogy published in Brazil, linked to the Project Homo Faber (2009). The trilogy consists of the books: I) The Artificer¹ (Sennett, 2009); II) Together: rituals, pleasures, and cooperation policy (Sennett, 2012); III) Build and Dwell: ethics for an open city (Sennett, 2018a). Such productions offer a possibility to reflect on the relationship between the city, its inhabitants and Education. Sennett, in fact, takes up and puts into dialogue the concepts of meat (the body) and stone² (the city), produced in 2003, delving deeper into the theme of human relations, the relationship between hand and thought, craftsmanship and technique, the differences between building and living and, finally, cooperation as a human way of being resistant and, in a participatory way, of/in the world.

To understand the relevance of Richard Sennett’s works for Brazilian Education, it is essential to contextualize them and draw connections between concepts and ideas presented by the author. Although, at first glance, the themes explored by Sennett may seem distant from Education, they are deeply embedded in everyday interpersonal relationships in school institutions. The theoretical choice to delve deeper into them was born in our group after reading the book Artífice (Sennett, 2009). In it, craftsmanship presents itself as an interesting possibility for discussing teaching work in children’s education (Gobbato, 2019; Machado, 2023; Cerbaro, 2023). Studies have indicated that “[...] the comprehension of an artisan teacher, who weaves practices with children based on a relationship of cooperation and dialogue, constitutes a powerful perspective for thinking about didactics in Early Childhood Education” (Gobbato; Barbosa, 2019, p. 1). Furthermore, the arguments developed in his book Together, when discussing cooperation as a skill that is developed through social interaction, encourage us to think about building ways of working cooperatively at school. Already in contact with the production Dwell, which presents questions that citizens ask themselves in relation to the city, allows us to consider the possibility of reflecting on life at school, questioning whether schools really inhabit a territory and whether children, in fact, inhabit schools.

Because of this, we question: does the constant tension between the planning of cities and their modes of construction defined by urban planners differ, or not, from the ways of feeling and living experienced by urbanites? How to articulate teaching as a craft with the production of educational spaces and curricula? Can doing things together indicate a way to carry out school and education cooperatively? These three points will be the anchor to present the author, his ideas, and the possibilities he opens to us in the educational debate.

Richard Sennett is an American urban sociologist, professor at American and English universities, who has an immense theoretical work. He also actively participates in contemporary debates involving topics such as: public space, historical study of cities and the effects of capitalism on new forms of work and, consequently, on the daily lives of adults and children and communities. The author indicates that it is necessary to create spaces of resistance in the city, through lived experiences, what is built in common and transformations throughout its process of change. Sennett states that urbanization provides relationships and practices with collective work, which constitutes subjects, with coherence, to build coexistence based on cooperation.

Sennett was born in Chicago in 1943. This city was not just any city in the United States (USA), but a city in continuous growth since the mid-19th century, with many migrants and immigrants who arrived, day by day, out of the need to find employment in their industries. Subjects who came from a life experience in European cities and therefore had expectations about life in the city, urban mobility, work relationships, leisure, among other aspects. The immense number of workers and their families forced Chicago City Hall to carry out a series of experimental urban projects³ to welcome and qualify the lives of its new inhabitants, and it is in this context of organization, and constant urban reorganization, that Sennett grew up and carried out his higher studies. The city’s sharp growth made visible the inequalities, differences, and conflicts that a modern metropolis needs to face (Valladares, 2005).

In an interview, Sennett (2018b) states that his grandparents were Jewish, one German and the other Russian, and both married Christian women. He comments that this “social atrocity” of marrying outside the faith expanded his world, accentuated his contact with ethnic and religious diversity, virtues necessary for life in the city and which are transversally present in his work. In addition to living in a city on the move, Sennett’s (2018b) family was communist and internationalist, and his parents participated as volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, as they both believed in the importance of solidarity between countries. Even in Chicago, they participated in movements to welcome and insert foreigners. His mother, upon returning to the US from Spain, became a social worker and during her life.

She worked for the communist party and was persecuted by McCarthy until, like almost all American communists, she realized what Soviet communism had become and stopped being communist. He dedicated almost a decade to creating legislation for a pioneering healthcare system (Sennett, 2018b).

Currently, Sennett positions himself as a socialist in the “Bernie Sanders” (2018b), but states that the positions and interests of Parties, both left and right, seem to have become more important than those conflicts and questions experienced by societies and communities. His point of view is that defending the interests of small groups or large groups, such as political parties, hinders the advancement of society.

In this context, it is important to highlight that there is a distinction between Sennett’s approach and intercultural and decolonial perspectives. As a result of his trajectory, his origin and cultural context, it is a fact that the author’s theoretical construction has, predominantly, roots in Western epistemologies. However, this does not mean that Sennett’s thought does not have the potential to dialogue with non-Western epistemologies. The interaction between Sennett’s approach and intercultural and decolonial perspectives can be considered as common elements are identified, such as the idea of cooperation, craftsmanship, housing, and ways of inhabiting. These concepts, explored by Sennett, also play an important role for non-Western epistemologies. In other words, even though Sennett is not a decolonial thinker, the concepts he addresses, especially in the previously mentioned works, are also worked on, defended, and supported by decolonial theories and with this, fruitful dialogues can be fostered.

Later, in addition to the city hall, the University of Chicago, based on pragmatist theories and symbolic interactionism, sought to academically understand the social problems that were imposed on the city. There was a great demand from university professors and managers for empirical, qualitative, and quantitative studies, which offered information for understanding and making decisions regarding the populations that occupied the city. Based on Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology and Anthropology, listening to the research subjects was extremely valued by the group of researchers from the urban area, and the citizens’ testimonies were transformed into a proposal for action or social intervention, that is, as the main reference for decision making.

Georg Simmel, a German sociologist, was the great inspirer of this school of Urban Sociology, led by Richard Park, in dialogue with the studies of William James, G. H. Mead, J. Dewey, precursors of the first generation of the university, and with Howard Becker and Erving Goffman, among others from the second generation. Research, monographs, and academic studies have made Chicago a great laboratory for studying the city and its social and community worlds.

Therefore, a deep relationship was established between the reception of new social actors and their movements, the city hall’s urban projects - transport, housing, school, health - and university research (and extension), generating knowledge and learning made possible with and by subjects in their different contexts. A critical return to the Chicago School⁴ is important at this time, as the big question that guided urban studies at the time was: how to build democracy in such a diverse universe?

The city and its inhabitants: does the city educate or is it educated?

Sennett (2018a) in his book Build and inhabit: ethics for an open city comment that it was the French who created two key concepts about city which are still productive today. On the one hand, the city as a physical place, the ville, built space, which covers the entire city, being known and proposed mainly by politicians and urban planners and built by civil construction entrepreneurs (Sennett, 2018a). And, on the other hand, the lived space, the cité, that is, the “mentality formed by perceptions, behaviors, beliefs” (Sennett, 2018a, p. 11), or even, ways of life of a neighborhood, a fragment of the city, with collective awareness of place and construction of citizenship.

It is necessary to remember that the built environment is a production of “stone”, but the way it is occupied, how we live, or even, how we intend to live, is the “flesh” (Sennett, 2003). Generally, flesh and stone do not present harmonious relationships, there is often a distance and a dispute between these two worlds (Sennett, 2018a), but despite presenting conflicts and different meanings, both are deeply related.

In the referred book, Sennett (2018a) points out how engineers, architects, politicians, and builders, in the transition from the 19th century to the 20th century, sought to find or create models that would enable the construction of a city suited to the new times. It explores three fundamental models. In Paris, Baron Haussmann’s project intended to build a city in a network format to become accessible to everyone. In Barcelona, with Ildefons Cerdà, who planned and built the Eixample, a neighborhood that could produce cooperative socialism in a cosmopolitan city, which facilitated encounters with those who are “different”, but offering everyone homes with fresh air, light, and space. In this case, reproducing the construction pattern in all blocks would be a possibility of generating equality and social inclusion. Finally, we have the work of F. L. Olmstead who sought, through parks, the choice of plants and paths, to make New York City more sociable, a meeting place where social interaction was more important than social and racial differences.

All these plans were appropriately designed and defended values appropriate to the new times, but they had limitations. When analyzing the models, it can be said that what was missing to become more successful events was the forgetting of elements such as the subjective experience of urbanites, their emotions, their interpersonal relationships, that is, everything that configures a cité. Analyzing these experiences, it is possible to conclude that urban planners have the role of educating the inhabitants, bringing non-segregating aesthetic, ethical and political elements that defend values expressed in the country’s Constitution, without disregarding technical knowledge about sanitation, road construction, among others. Others already studied and experimented in other places. However, what was still unknown to urban planners is that the city is also educated by its residents and users, who need to actively participate in decisions about the community.

The debates on Education in contemporary times, especially those focused on school and the curriculum, also point to the need to reflect on this dialogical relationship between macro policies, policies that come from above, and micro policies, reflections, proposals, and political resistance constituted by users and school populations (Ball, 2021). In this way, the questions among urban planners, organizers and participants of social movements and educators are similar: how should experts act? Should the urban planner/teacher adapt or change the city (Sennett, 2018a)? Does the school need to intervene and change the community, or just adapt to it? Should a smart city be prescriptive in its master plan or coordinating different points of view, giving space for dialogue (Sennett, 2018a)? Is it possible to build an ethics of change or just an ethics of maintenance in the city, in schools, in social relations (Sennett, 2018a)?

According to Sennett (2018a), the urban planner, whether an architect, engineer, or sociologist, as well as a teacher, more than being a leader needs to stimulate the complexity of the issues under debate, creating interactivity and synergy between partners. By assuming this active attitude, of author and social actor, you can position yourself as a partner of urbanites (citizens/students), someone with whom it is possible to dialogue, (discuss) criticize, reflect, act. To build an open city, an open school, an open teaching attitude,⁵ it would free subjects from preconceived ideas, fixed identities, and ghettos, thus constituting space for dialogue and expansion of experiences and promoting, at the same time, difference, and commonality.

As we have seen, Sennett (2018a) argues that the city is an open system, in which there is a clear direction regarding the needs relating to the whole of the city ville, but that this direction must be open to listening to the demands of the cité. Create an attitude of anticipatory prediction about what may happen, what is necessary, decisions that visualize the future, but, at the same time, be able to pay attention to surprises, new developments, that change the direction.

Promoting this open city system favors multiple childhoods that have been increasingly confined to private spaces. Sarmento (2018), highlights that one of the factors restricting childhood citizenship is precisely the limitation of children’s mobility autonomy, arising from urban policies that fragment cities. On the other hand, the author highlights that the city:

[...] is, by definition, a space of multiple social interactions, where the essential functions of individual and collective life take place. What determines the possibility of enhancing citizenship is the development of urban policies that allow for the recognition and participation of children. Policies aimed at children’s well-being and child citizenship can enhance the following favorable factors: personalization, affordance, experience, intergenerationality, participation and urbanity (Sarmento, 2018, p. 236).

From this perspective, the organization of the city, when seen in relation to childhood, presents two dimensions. The first is limitation, whose fragmented space imposes mobility restrictions and impoverished childhood experiences. The second is expansion, which can be “[...] the place of children’s experience, by enhancing the forms of discovery and knowledge that it provides. [...] because of transgression by children” (Sarmento, 2018, p. 238). Or also through urban policies open to listening to demands, uncertainty, ambiguity, complexity, incompleteness, porosity, multiplicity, and changes made along the way through dialogue between groups, which enrich the experience, build new identities and strategies of resistance in the face of an oppressive model of power (Sennett, 2018a).

Urban planners have a notion of the whole of cities that allows them to think about their future development, the need for sanitation, garbage collection and its uses, streets widened for cars or those prepared for use by pedestrians and cyclists. This perspective is based on historical studies of cities, sociological and anthropological studies on neighborhoods, ways of life, the needs of Education and public health and the resolution of economic problems such as the creation of new materials for the construction of buildings and roads.

Contrary to cities or open schools that seek the inclusion of everyone, schools and cities as closed systems demonstrate their fear of otherness and their inability to deal with the complexity present in large metropolises. There is a rigidity in decision-making that impoverishes the experience. In them, the uses of technologies are simple and facilitated, excluding users from understanding the technology and the possibility of its adaptation and reinvention. Cities and closed schools are deeply authoritarian spaces. A city, a school, or even a closed, prescriptive curriculum emphasizes problem solving, while an open city detects problems and confronts them, as it is curious and democratic.

The debate about the existence of a standard city model was discussed in 1933, in the city of Athens, where thirty-three cities were chosen to systematize their conceptions of life, work, recreation and circulation. In summary, the final letter was greatly influenced by Le Corbusier, based on the Voisin plan, inspired by the radiant city, by the author mentioned above, and was centered on the functionalism and professionalism of the urban planner. Two voices were raised against this conception. The first was that of Jane Jacobs, an American, who based on conceptions derived from the Chicago School wanted to “open the city, from the bottom up”, that is, a dense and diverse city (Sennett, 2018a, p. 97) built from slow and small processes defending a conception of direct democracy, in the tradition of community civic meetings.

The other voice, also North American, was that of Lewis Mumford, an urbanist from a more conventional left, who stated that permanent spontaneity was not the best instrument in the fight against real estate speculation and that issues of race, class, ethnicity, or religion were to face stable rules and public policies aimed at achieving social values. Mumford wanted to open the city by making Ville according to a socialist plan, his ideal was the Garden City, which had already been built in Great Britain, the United States, and some Scandinavian countries. The objective of the garden city was to create urban spaces as places where nature and construction coexist in balance. The close presence of home, factory, school, and store would provide a good life for everyone.

Sennett (2018a) argues that when conflict situations are identified in open systems, whether at school, on the streets, in squares or in the city, it is important to try to pause to understand the difficulties of dialogue, analyze the contradictions, ambiguities, paradoxes, without making hasty decisions, or solving problems without reflection, or even dismissing the problem due to the degree of difficulty they impose on the interlocutors.

In this sense, to participate in open education, it is important that knowledge is embodied, and this means giving visibility at school to the different bodies that also exist in the city, their presence, their ideas, their demands, their ways of acting and relating, which are often silenced and erased, after all:

Writing about the city implies considering what it is made of: the presences that constitute it as it is. Black, poor, peripheral, squatter, indigenous, homeless children, among many others, mark and make the city in their own way, therefore, if we want to consider that discussing the city is done from the perspective of children and considering their points of view, it is essential that all of them are considered in their voices, desires, needs, the same occurs with women, who, understood here not only as reproducers, but inventors of so many other forms of struggle and achievements [...] (Gobbi; Anjos; Pito, 2020, p. 205).

Therefore, it is necessary for the school to build other ways of thinking, other points of view within capitalist society, alternative ways to it, based on the social practices experienced and learned in social interactions. An open school, without walls, in tune with a plural city. That an awareness of local contexts be created, and strategies for living in the city should be constructed, always based on learning through dialogic practices.

A city, as Aristotle said in Policy, needs to be formed by different types of men, as only similar people cannot give life to her. Travelers, foreigners, immigrants, and refugees bring new skills, points of view and arguments, thus, the coexistence in the city of different social groups enriches the human experience, opens paths for different ways of inhabiting the world, of coexisting, that is, it creates a community and personal life with many layers. This diversity is also fundamental in educational relationships, especially in an open school project.

Craftwork: the studio, the characters, and the craft

Ateliers, workshops, and laboratories have always been present in small urban agglomerations, from Ancient Greece to the Middle Ages. From the Renaissance to modern cities, the artisan played an important role in the production of community life with his tools and products. He was the one who wove, produced musical instruments, worked with clay, built artifacts for the production and consumption of food, made shoes and belts, created tools to be used in agriculture and in caring for animals, as well as he designed and built instruments of war, therefore, the diversity and quality of his work were fundamental to everyone’s lives, especially before factories.

The idea of workshops, of guilds, is present in the romantic conceptions of utopians, and even Marx admired this type of productive organization. In the manuscript Grundrisse, this author considered craftsmanship as a formative activity, emphasizing that social relations developed through the production of physical things, making the development of the individual possible (Sennett, 2009). Also in the text Gotha Program Review, Marx renewed the idea that communism could revive the spirit of craftsmanship. After all, this was a mode of production that allowed workers to understand all stages of their work and, also gave space for originality, the creation of new elements and, with the experience of collective work, enabled social and political organization.

The workshops were institutions committed to the city, many ateliers, and workshops, when producing, with quality and distinction, a certain type of food or clothing, or even jewelry, became recognized for this specificity. From a social point of view, these institutions were committed both to the human training of each apprentice, which characterized them as educational, and to the construction of a way of producing work characterized by a commitment to quality and cooperation between professionals.

The characters: master, day laborer and apprentice

The ateliers and workshops were environments where pairs, despite intergenerational differences, worked together, sharing projects and tools, but maintaining authority and hierarchy. According to Sennett (2013, p. 10), the word artisan

[...] brings an immediate image to mind. For example, suppose we approach a window in a carpentry shop, and inside, we see an older man, surrounded by apprentices and tools. Order reigns everywhere, the pieces of the chairs are carefully grouped, a fresh smell of sawdust wafts through the air, and the carpenter leans over the table to make a fine marquetry incision. When we imagine this scene, we see it as something doomed to disappear; Maybe, for example, because across the street they opened a furniture factory that will put an end to the studio.

In the image described above, we have the traditional idea of the artisan as just a manual worker, busy training new generations for the craft. A professional on the verge of “extinction”, after all, the artisan’s dedication requires attention, skill, concentration, reflection, creativity and, therefore, a suitable remuneration. However, the factory produces massively, at low cost.

In contemporary societies, other images of artisanal work can populate the social imagination, expanding more conventional conceptions. Sennett cites, for example, the work of a young “artisan” in a research laboratory. In the morning, she finds some dead guinea pigs and worries about what happened: did the injection she gave the animals not work? The procedure was not, correct? Was the medication not in the right dose? Or even: did another unidentified element make this event possible?

These questions are characteristic of craftsmanship and are related to the technique. Therefore, intellectual activities, such as research, can be approached in an artisanal way, as both are based on the construction of questions, the perspective of observation and experience, debate between peers and people with different levels of experience.⁶

The more developed the technical skills and skills of the craftsman, the more they enable awareness of their capabilities and new problems to be addressed. The craftsman doesn’t just want things to work and repeat themselves ad infinitum, on the contrary, you want to understand and create more appropriate tools, new products, reinvent material resources and, finally, create new skills.

Repeating does not mean doing the same thing, but doing it again accompanied by new questions and answers. Wright Mills addresses the idea of intellectual craftsmanship and highlights the importance of not separating work from life experience:

Knowledge is a choice of both a way of life and a career; whether he knows it or not, the intellectual worker forms himself as he works to perfect his craft; to realize his own potential, and any opportunities that come his way, he builds a character that has at its core the qualities of a good worker (Mills, 2009, p. 22).

This approach to intellectual craftsmanship shows that the satisfaction derived from achievements is the main reward of craftsmanship. The details of daily work are related to both the process and the product, and the craft of intellectual craftsmanship allows for the freedom to experiment and find a social place.

Another example presented by the author is that of the director of an orchestra. The administrator observes the rehearsal and is worried about how he will pay for the conductor’s working hours. How much will so many overtimes hours cost? However, the conductor and musicians are more involved with the quality of the music’s execution, they are artisans of sounds, focused on doing their task well, especially for the love of a job well done. Craftsmanship is any practice that, when developing its work, involves an investigation, which does not separate the hand from the mind, the science of art and the technique of imagination. Not educational field, as Pallasmaa (2013, p. 12) states:

This division between body and mind has, of course, its solid foundations in the history of Western philosophy. Regrettably, prevailing pedagogies and educational practices also continue to separate mental, intellectual, and emotional abilities from the senses and multiple dimensions of human embodiment. [...] In other words, the educational principles that prevail today fail to understand the indeterminate, dynamic, and sensually integrated essence of the existence of human thought and action.

In this sense, Sennett (2009), observing the binary conceptions of contemporary society, inverts the hierarchical distinction between practice and theory, giving greater relevance to practice, to the body’s learning. For the author, society dissociating the material from the analytical sphere results in damage to intellect, thought and imagination.

In the ateliers, these three characters - master, day laborer and apprentice - work together despite performing different functions. The more experienced master, in addition to teaching the craft, carries out activities related to the sale of products and establishes relationships with other businesses in the city and those responsible for administration, such as the city hall. The day laborer is the one who knows the job, organizes the practices, and maintains production in the studio, continuing the training of new apprentices.

The craft: body, tools and materialities

The craftsman’s craft has been equated with that of Hephaestus (Vulcan), god of Greek mythology, son of Zeus and Hera, related to technology, blacksmiths, artisans, sculptors, metals, the fire of volcanoes and fire (Sennett, 2009).

Craftsmanship requires a constant dialogue between concrete practice and thought, whether it is experienced in weaving, creating a dish of food, performing a song or a play. The craftsman’s job is learned over a long period of training. How old does a musician need to be trained? How much gold does a goldsmith need to learn to understand the material, manipulate it and make his design?

To acquire the necessary skills, it is necessary to invest in the relationship between doing (the hand) and thinking (rationalization, imagination, and creation), that is, one body. A concentrated body that learns and lives with stimulating people, tools and materialities (Sennett, 2009).

From this point of view, the notion of craftsmanship can dialogue with the Aristotelian perspective of knowledge, in which, in treating the topic, the philosopher proposes the distinction between theory (cognitive activity), praxis (practical activity) and poiésis (creative activity). Risatti (2007) uses Aristotelian categorization to tension representations linked to separation and explore the relationship between different spheres of knowledge. According to the author, the artisan must be seen in the field of poiésis:

[...] because technical skill and creative imagination come together in craftsmanship to give existence to the thing as a physical-conceptual entity. Craftsmanship, like poiésis, should be understood as a creative act in which real physical form is brought together with an idea/concept. This is the creative act that underlies every original handcrafted object. In this sense, craftsmanship is a process of formalizing material and materializing it in a way that results in creation (Risatti, 2007, p. 168).

A poiésis, therefore, is related to craftsmanship since it links practice and theory, doing and thinking, that is, the craftsman’s craft integrates the different dimensions of knowledge and in this fusion the creative act takes place. Skills develop through operational intelligence(s) that allow repetition, resistance, and intuition, generating quality. Studying the practice, modulating it, is a long process of shared training. Aspiring to the recognition of quality generates the need to establish expertise in what is done and makes the craftsman proud of his authority through the recognition of others.

Workshops, especially in the Renaissance, began to transform into art studios. However, what differentiates the craftsman from the artist? For Sennett (2009), the difference is: in the perspective on the agent, whether individual or collective; in the time used to carry out a job, whether slow or fast as in manufacturing; in the exclusively individual originality of the work or in the collective debate about its accomplishment; in technology as a replacement for craftsmanship or as a complement or bodily extension; in the modes of remuneration, sale or patronage (Sennett, 2009).

According to Sennett (2009), the past of craftsmanship and artisans suggests ways of using tools, organizing body movements, and reflecting on materials, alternative proposals that are still viable today to conduct work and life with skill. When commenting on some characteristics of craftsmanship, the author refers to the need for sketches and openness to limitations, that is, understanding contingencies, allowing imperfection, and not being obsessed with perfection, warning that a good craftsman knows the moment to stop, when imperfections are accepted instead of the search for purity (Sennett, 2009).

The place: ateliers, workshops, and laboratories

The workshop, the atelier and the laboratory are the different homes of the artisan. This idea was born in the Middle Ages, as artisans slept, ate, and raised their children in the places where they worked. The workshop was a small space where the family and their families lived. This image demonstrates the attraction that the workshop had on socialists and utopians, who faced the rudeness of the factory space.

A characteristic present in the workshop is the continuous organization, as each tool, part and instrument have its place, and collective work requires responsibility and cooperation. The workshops, despite repeating their products, were also spaces of concern and engagement, as the construction of technical capabilities expanded curiosity and imagination, problems and resistance demanded to be understood and resolved to continue production.

In a workshop, by making moderation and simplicity in relationships a form of dedication, in addition to learning about the process and the product, people also learn about themselves and how to live together. The idea of workshops, ateliers, laboratories, and studios cannot be abandoned because these are spaces of social cohesion, whether through work rituals, the pleasure of being together, sharing information face to face, carrying out training and intergenerational cooperation (Sennett, 2009, 2012).

Craftsmanship is “a lasting and basic human impulse, the desire to perform a task well” (Sennett, 2009, p. 20), which requires the artisan to build skills, an ethic of commitment and reflection on what has been accomplished. In the Illustration period, it was believed that all human beings would have the basic skills to do something; today, unlike, there is a tendency to prioritize differences in skills, and the skilled are few. To the author

[...] the rhythm of the craft routine is inspired by children’s experience of the game, and almost all children play well. It is not likely that the dialogue with materials that takes place in crafts will be recognized by intelligence tests; Once again, most people are able to reason well about their physical sensations. Craftsmanship embodies the great paradox that an activity of great refinement and complexity can arise from mental acts as simple as the detailed description of facts and their subsequent investigation. No one can deny that individuals are born different or become different. But when it comes to human beings, inequality is not the most important thing. The ability of our species to produce things highlights what we have in common. The fact of sharing these talents leads to political consequences. (Sennett, 2009, p. 329).

When playing, children learn to communicate with others, to understand the resistance and flexibility of materialities and to construct increasingly elaborate rules about their experience. They relearn, from their practices, the complexity of the action processes that support the construction of a self that does things well and participates by constituting citizenship.

Teaching understood as craftsmanship leads to the understanding of the school as a place committed to human formation, the teaching profession as a cooperative, original, and creative action, and the teacher as a character who listens to apprentices supported by historical, technical, and scientific, political, aesthetic, and ethical, promoting dialogue.

In life, and at school we do things together

According to Sennett (2012), we live in an increasingly tribal society, where small groups continually manifest themselves, in an “us versus them” dynamic, especially when we are similar, and they are different. The diversity of the world and the inequality between people have made it difficult to establish a single cultural model of “human being”, as it is known that it will always be limited, and perspective based. As a way out of this lack of possibility of plurality and coexistence in diversity, the author points out that it is in doing things in common, doing things together and in cooperation, that is, in debates and decisions relating to practical activities, that we can find the possibilities of a path in which everyone feels involved and benefits.

According to Sennett (2012, p. 10), “social cooperation lubricates the machinery necessary to do things and co-participation can compensate for what we may lack individually”, both of which can support other conceptions of the city, school, and social movements. Living with differences in a metropolis or school is so challenging that there cannot be a single model for all places in the world.

For this reason, it becomes important to build ethical availability based on shared practices end of transform our public schools into open schools. However, for this to happen, the school must not have walls that form borders with the community, with the city, with social movements. It is also necessary for the school to be available to build itself daily “together” with people, in cooperation.

The recognition of cooperation as the basis of human development (Varela; Thompson; Rosch, 2003; Erikson, 1976) needs to be understood as the possibility of building dialogical skills, which lead people to understand each other, and this becomes easier when there is a need to accomplish something in common, especially something that benefits everyone.

In studies with babies, it is observed that, from an early age, their interactions are marked by attitudes of empathy and cooperation that emerge before those of individuation. Children can only become subjects when interacting with others of the same species (Sennett, 2012). Rituals of listening, mutual respect, reciprocity, as well as blessing and talent are elements that can facilitate the construction of cooperation skills, especially if carried out in intergenerational relationships between adults and children.

Although cooperation and solidarity have always been present in human life, the “social issue” will be discussed based on the lives of immigrants and homeless people. The problem presents in large cities in the 19th and 20th centuries needed a political response. In Chicago, solidarity, associationism, and unions started social movements through shelters or vocational workshops (Sennett, 2012).

Increasingly, in the contemporary world, active cooperation is being disabled by individualistic behavior and inequality between people. Therefore, it is necessary to establish practices and rituals that preserve ways of tracing the common. Still, Sennett does not consider competition and cooperation to be antipodal actions, he believes that there can be a complementation, or even a “fragile balance” especially in actions in which everyone wins. Bonding through doing involves co-producing. In this type of production, the specialist does not have all the knowledge, co-production aims to constitute the dialogical skill in which specialists and inhabitants, be they urbanites, students, activists, can build something from their different life experiences.

Another ethics for open systems: a perspective for cities, social movements, and schools

At the end of the book Building and inhabiting: ethics for an open city, Richard Sennett makes a statement: “I encourage the hope that the understanding of craftsmanship and social cooperation will be able to inspire new ideas about better city building” (Sennett, 2018a, p.11). This, in a way, is the answer to the question: how to build democracy in such a diverse universe?

To this end, Sennett presents two ways of facing the gap between what is constructed and what is lived: the ville and the cité, the school and the city, the nation-state curriculum, and the emerging curriculum. First, he cites the idea of co-production, that is, carrying out work in an open way, in which the urban planner (specialist) has as much value as the urbanites (inhabitants), both working from a deep dialogue between their different experiences. Experts play the role of advisor, but decisions are up to users. To achieve this, it is important to establish a process of planning and action based on common action. To carry out this meeting, you need time, a qualified space, materials that help to think and create, and if necessary, also tools and machines (Sennett, 2018a).

Secondly, the author highlights open cooperative action, with an emphasis on sociability. Sociability allows interaction but does not require partnership. This view may seem utilitarian, but it helps to guarantee personhood. The important thing is to be interested in the task, the possibilities, the choices, an honest and moderate social bond (Sennett, 2018).

In the current scenario of individualism and atomization, there are social movements that have strong potential participatory, both in the educational and political fields, such as the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) and Urban Occupations, such as the Homeless Workers’ Movement (MTST). In both, we have people involved in urgent issues that require practical and timely operations in the fight for housing. As an example, the collective activities - artistic and social - researched by Gobbi, Anjos and Pito (2020) in the Ocupação 9 de Julho in São Paulo: Sunday public lunches that constitute moments of meeting, of joint struggle, resistance, and reinvention, as well such as shows, lectures, exhibition of children’s drawings on the wall and children’s party (designed for and with them). These are aesthetic and political actions, marked by the subjects who live there, “[...] ways of living that combine women and children in a constant and inventive way of constituting themselves in the city, treating and producing in solidarity solutions that restore and maintain the life” (Gobbi; Anjos; Pito, 2020, p. 206).

In social movements, craftsmanship and cooperation are present (Sennett, 2009; Sennett, 2012) when adults and children engage in the construction of alternatives and solutions to live better. Amid the dialogue between ideas and concrete practices, ways of living are cooperatively woven to break with silencing and exclusion, in the search for the construction of a city that is “open”, curious, and democratic (Sennett, 2018a).

The school, in this context, is an important articulating space that can contribute to organizing the lives of children and their families. The construction of time and space for families to meet, to share reflections and act shows the importance of school action in the territory. Children cannot fully engage in learning relationships in schools when their lives and those of their families are in danger. Like every institution that welcomes and educates, the school is deeply committed to the social rights of provision, protection, and participation of children. A school that is not just a State framework, but that perceives and acts as a social movement, that is, a State Public School that is built on the relationship with the territory, on encounter and dialogue.

Sennett states that climate change and its unpredictable phenomena will impose on societies the need for cooperation. In a closed system, institutions - cities, schools, houses - change step by step, “small events accumulate and aggregate”, in a linear and stable way. In open systems, on the contrary, ruptures are seen as a way of altering the entire system, turning points or revolutions are created. Ruptures may require repairs, and the craftsman can help think about how to make this physical, social, and emotional repair. A repair can be carried out as restoration (making the object look new), rectification (replacing a part, using a product that will leave traces), or even reconfiguration (as an opportunity to transform it into something different from what it was, both in its function and in its form). These attitudes can be compared with political positions on the right, center and left (Sennett, 2018a). In a country where social conflicts are acutely accentuated, understanding the concept of reconfiguration can support the creation of social, political, and even personal alternatives. This is a good contribution from Richard Sennett, along with the idea of doing it together, to the challenges we face educationally in Brazil.

Life needs to be continually remade, Bachelard (2008) already stated. We abandon the security of our cradle to be in a city that presents us with challenges that are not always possible to welcome and resolve. Sennett argues that it is necessary, in practice, to have a certain type of humility, to learn to live as one among many. Many who are different and are mobilized by a world that does not mirror us. A complex world that requires openness to others and the context. Being able to live as one, among many, corresponds, in the words of Robert Venturi (apud Sennett, 2018a), to choosing richness of meanings over clarity of meanings. This is the ethics of an open city, in which inclusion and respect are fundamental attitudes to be able to be and live, whether in cities, schools or social movements.

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• SUPPORT/FINANCING

  There was no support from a funding agency.

• RESEARCH DATA AVAILABILITY

  All data was generated/analyzed in this article.
• 3
  This article was translated by Caroline Lima Teixeira Fuao - E-mail: [e-mail]. After being designed, it was submitted for validation by the author(s) before publication.

• 1
  An artisan or craftsman is a worker, worker or craftsman who produces some artifact or who performs his art depending on the orders he receives. The craftsman is the one who invents, creates something, composes it, assumes authorship. Manufacturer of artifacts, products, machines or even thoughts, drawings, relationships. One who develops an art.
• 2
  The decline of the public man: the tyrannies of intimacy (1988) and Flesh and stone: the body and the city in Western Civilization (2003) are previous books by the author that support discussions of the trilogy.
• 3
  From the mid-19th century to the end of the 20th century, we will find many researchers such as Howard Becker and politicians such as Hilary Clinton, the couple Michele and Obama who participated and discussed the urban practices of social insertion carried out in Chicago.
• 4
  The book organized by Licia do Prado Valladares (2005) and chapter three “The divorce between cité and ville” from the book Build and live (2018a) can be qualified introductions to the thinking of this school of Urban Sociology.
• 5
  An open system implies a system of adaptation between the strange, the curious, the possible (Sennett, 2018a). They are systems with broad networks of components, which give rise to complex collective behavior. Complexity arises during the process, through participation, debate, and selection of information.
• 6
  The workshops were made up of: apprentices, children and young people who remained for around eight years under the direction of the master; day laborers who constituted the already trained workforce and carried out the workshop’s ongoing tasks; and master, trainer and coordinator of work in the workshop and in the community.

Data availability

All data was generated/analyzed in this article.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  03 May 2024
• Date of issue
  2024

History

• Received
  07 Mar 2022
• Accepted
  09 Feb 2024