Acclaimed author and visionary social thinker Amitai Etzioni calls for a new balance between rights and responsibilities and a reawakened allegiance to the communities and institutions that sustain us. Etzioni shows how today's Americans can work to rebuild the family, cultivate tolerance, encourage character education in schools, and above all, strengthen communities. 8 charts.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
Etzioni, who has acquired an international reputation for his advocacy of the "communitarian" point of view, defines communitarianism as a movement designed to "bring about the changes in values, habits, and public policies that will allow us to do for society what the environmental movement seeks to do for nature: to safeguard and enhance our future." In this book, he sets forth an agenda for correcting the "imbalance" between rights and responsibilities in American society. His agenda is focused in particular on rebuilding families and schools to instill in our citizens a sense of responsibility to the interests of the community as a whole. While many of Etzioni's recommendations are grounded in common sense, his book fails to grapple with the many important philosophical issues raised by his dual critique of liberalism and conservatism. A more satisfying study from a similar perspective is Philip Selznick's The Moral Commonwealth ( LJ 10/1/92). Recommended for larger libraries.
- Kent Worcester, Social Science Research Council, New York
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Kent Worcester, Social Science Research Council, New York
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
A primer on how to move from the ``me generation'' (castigated by Etzioni in An Immodest Agenda, 1982) to the ``we generation.'' The text doubles as a manifesto for the Communitarian movement, which Etzioni helped found in 1991 and which he heavily promotes here as an antidote to many of the ills of the permissive 70's and 80's. Etzioni (Sociology/George Washington University) defines ``communitarianism'' as an ``environmental movement dedicated to the betterment of our moral, social and political environment.'' We can, he says, reverse the breakdown of the family, rising crime rates, deteriorating schools, and political corruption by restoring those communities (family, neighborhood, professional, etc.) that uphold strong moral values--even if these values clash with the individual rights extolled by civil libertarians. Etzioni does a lot of fancy footwork to avoid charges of authoritarianism, insisting that we can ``shore up'' our values and institutions without becoming a church-dominated or right-wing society. Among his targets are ``no fault'' divorce, since it allegedly sanctions divorce and leads to one-parent families; the insatiable pursuit of careers that conflict with parenting and community service; and special-interest groups that get in the way of effective government. Throughout, Etzioni lards his argument with show- stopping rubrics (such as ``McDonald's is Not Our Kind of Place,'' which means that teens working in fast-food restaurants are trained to become robots and senseless consumers). A lively polemic that highlights some important issues for the 90's and that seems more or less in step with the beliefs of the man at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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More About the Author
After receiving his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1958, Dr. Amitai Etzioni served as a Professor of Sociology at Columbia University for 20 years; part of that time as the Chairman of the department. He was a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution in 1978 before serving as a Senior Advisor to the White House from 1979-1980. In 1980, Dr. Etzioni was named the first University Professor at The George Washington University, where he is the Director of the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies. From 1987-1989, he served as the Thomas Henry Carroll Ford Foundation Professor at the Harvard Business School.
Dr. Etzioni served as the president of the American Sociological Association in 1994-95, and in 1989-90 was the founding president of the international Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics. In 1990, he founded the Communitarian Network, a not-for-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to shoring up the moral, social and political foundations of society. He was the editor of The Responsive Community: Rights and Responsibilities, the organization's quarterly journal, from 1991-2004. In 1991, the press began referring to Dr. Etzioni as the 'guru' of the communitarian movement.
Dr. Etzioni is the author of numerous books, including The Monochrome Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), The Limits of Privacy (New York: Basic Books, 1999), The New Golden Rule (New York: Basic Books, 1996), which received the Simon Wiesenthal Center's 1997 Tolerance Book Award, The Spirit of Community (New York: Crown Books, 1993), and The Moral Dimension: Toward a New Economics, (New York: Free Press, 1988). His most recent books are My Brother's Keeper: A Memoir and a Message (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), and From Empire to Community: A New Approach to International Relations (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
Outside of academia, Dr. Etzioni's voice is frequently heard in the media.
In 2001, he was named among the top 100 American intellectuals as measured by academic citations in Richard Posner's book, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline.
Also in 2001, Dr. Etzioni was awarded the John P. McGovern Award in Behavioral Sciences as well as the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. He was also the recipient of the Seventh James Wilbur Award for Extraordinary Contributions to the Appreciation and Advancement of Human Values by the Conference on Value Inquiry, as well as the Sociological Practice Association's Outstanding Contribution Award.
Dr. Etzioni is married and has five sons.
Dr. Etzioni served as the president of the American Sociological Association in 1994-95, and in 1989-90 was the founding president of the international Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics. In 1990, he founded the Communitarian Network, a not-for-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to shoring up the moral, social and political foundations of society. He was the editor of The Responsive Community: Rights and Responsibilities, the organization's quarterly journal, from 1991-2004. In 1991, the press began referring to Dr. Etzioni as the 'guru' of the communitarian movement.
Dr. Etzioni is the author of numerous books, including The Monochrome Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), The Limits of Privacy (New York: Basic Books, 1999), The New Golden Rule (New York: Basic Books, 1996), which received the Simon Wiesenthal Center's 1997 Tolerance Book Award, The Spirit of Community (New York: Crown Books, 1993), and The Moral Dimension: Toward a New Economics, (New York: Free Press, 1988). His most recent books are My Brother's Keeper: A Memoir and a Message (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), and From Empire to Community: A New Approach to International Relations (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
Outside of academia, Dr. Etzioni's voice is frequently heard in the media.
In 2001, he was named among the top 100 American intellectuals as measured by academic citations in Richard Posner's book, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline.
Also in 2001, Dr. Etzioni was awarded the John P. McGovern Award in Behavioral Sciences as well as the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. He was also the recipient of the Seventh James Wilbur Award for Extraordinary Contributions to the Appreciation and Advancement of Human Values by the Conference on Value Inquiry, as well as the Sociological Practice Association's Outstanding Contribution Award.
Dr. Etzioni is married and has five sons.
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