Digital List Price:	$21.34
Print List Price:	$20.95
Kindle Price:	$15.76 Save $5.19 (25%)
	includes VAT*

Deliver to your Kindle or other device

Added to

Unable to add item to List. Please try again.

Enter a promotion code or Gift Card

Share <Embed>

The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods by [McKnight, John, Block, Peter]

The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods Kindle Edition

by John McKnight (Author), Peter Block (Author)

46 customer reviews

See all 5 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$15.76

—

Hardcover

"Please retry"

—

$37.87

$7.04

Paperback

"Please retry"

$15.41

$13.18

$3.39

"
We need our neighbors and community to stay healthy, produce jobs, raise our children, and care for those on the margin. Institutions and professional services have reached their limit of their ability to help us.

The consumer society tells us that we are insufficient and that we must purchase what we need from specialists and systems outside the community. We have become consumers and clients, not citizens and neighbors. John McKnight and Peter Block show that we have the capacity to find real and sustainable satisfaction right in our neighborhood and community.

This book reports on voluntary, self-organizing structures that focus on gifts and value hospitality, the welcoming of strangers. It shows how to reweave our social fabric, especially in our neighborhoods. In this way we collectively have enough to create a future that works for all.

"

Length: 193 pages	Word Wise: Enabled	Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
Page Flip: Enabled

Customers who bought this item also bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Peter Block

104

Kindle Edition
$10.74
Peter Block

22

Kindle Edition
$9.99
Paul Sparks

53

Kindle Edition
$4.79
Cormac Russell

2

Kindle Edition
$2.99
Gil Rendle

15

Kindle Edition
$14.85
Walter Brueggemann

42

Kindle Edition
$9.14

Product details

File Size: 846 KB
Print Length: 193 pages
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers (June 14, 2010)
Publication Date: June 14, 2010
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B00F9FL398
Text-to-Speech: Enabled

X-Ray:

Not Enabled

Word Wise: Enabled
Lending: Not Enabled
Screen Reader: Supported

Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #384,577 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #1242 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Sociology
- #8942 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Sociology

Would you like to tell us about a lower price?

Customer Reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars

5 star		72%
4 star		9%
3 star		9%
2 star		8%
1 star		2%

Write a customer review

See all verified purchase reviews

Top Customer Reviews

Only half of the message

Bys j g clarkeon September 12, 2015

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This is a shoot-from-the-hip version of community organizing... and Alinsky wrote the definitive version of this in 1969. Getting the community to pay for everything is all well and good, but you have to have a plan for utilizing the outcomes in a constructive and reasoned [rational] way to link it with the rest of society. They have to pay for some of it, too. Organizers are apt to become too protective of 'their' communities, believing that they alone can handle law, public health, diplomacy and economic planning.... give the community a window of opportunity and they will walk right into the challenge. Trust me, I'm a community organizer.

0Comment 5 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Gift Mindedness, Associational Life, Hospitality

ByAlicia Crumptonon December 20, 2013

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

McKnight and Block put forth a particular view of what an abundant community looks like. First our desire for an abundant community arises out of a personal awakening, "[1] to create a culture made by [our] own vision; [2] we see the abundance we have; and [3] we know that the power of what we have grows from creating new connections and relationships" (p. 1). An abundant community is then characterized as one where each person recognizes (pp. 4, 5):
* The giving of gifts
* The presence of association
* The compassion of hospitality

Part 1 described a shift in our identifying ourselves as citizens to instead seeing ourselves in light of consumerism, in essence we became consumers. What we lost in this shift is discussed.
Part 2 describes what an abundant community looks like in terms of structure, capacities, and action.
Part 3 calls for awakening families and neighborhoods and recognizes the power of connections.

References to case studies are provided along with a bibliography.
See also Block, P. (2008). Community: The structure of belonging. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

0Comment One person found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

A must-read for everyone who care about community!

ByAmazon Customeron November 12, 2016

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This book came to my attention when a family and community keynote speaker had it laid out on a table along with many of my other favorites. I started reading it immediately and was moved and validated by its contents. Some of the things I felt my community needed were now articulated for me in a clear and inarguable fashion. Other ideas about the empty promises of systems vs. the fulfillment of needs in abundant communities, had not occurred to me, but rang so true as I read them. I am implementing the suggestions to great effect in my neighborhood.

0CommentWas this review helpful to you?YesNo

This book is one of the best I've read this year

ByAllen Engleron May 17, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

This book is one of the best I've read this year. It is both deconstructive and constructive. It reveals the degree to which consumerism has damaged our families and communities and even our souls. It painted a depressing picture of the state we find ourselves in and it explains why and how we got here. It did not leave me in despair, however. Just the opposite, it created both hope and a way forward. There is a way of living counter-culturally that can lead to abundance for all. This is a book that has cause me to see the community differently. I've gone from black and white to color.

0Comment One person found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Ideas and Actions for the Real Challenges that Face Us

ByChristopher B. Bedfordon August 30, 2010

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

John McKnight and Peter Block have written a visionary manual for the world we are entering, the world we must create if we are to survive the crisises that threaten to overwhelm us. The economic changes caused by the end of the petroleum era are immense and immediate for an economy like ours. The humanitarian, ecological, and financial costs associated with climate change -- the increase in the severity of storms like in Pakistan -- the widespread change in rain and moisture patterns in the food baskets of the planet -- these too threaten to overwhelm government. Although its rhetoric is off point, the Tea Party Movement in the US is, in part, a response to this disintegration of global industrial systems.

The Abundant Community offers answers to these challenges and more by redirecting our attention to the resources of our immediate community, neighborhood, family. Their message is commonsense and hopeful. This book is a transformation experience, one that can help launch a new movement -- one McKnight and Block call Asset Based Community Development or ABCD, for short.

Don't worry about the academic terminology. Buy this book. And share it with all you think are looking for a path forward. It has the answers.

0Comment 25 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

A compelling argument that lacks concrete solutions.

Byjoe Jenkinson November 26, 2014

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

An evocative read for those looking to question the impact of consumerism on our communities and some strategies to build resilient and flourishing communities. I still find it difficult to see how this theory could work in urban environments.

11 comment 3 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

How do you define Community?

ByGJohnon November 1, 2016

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

simply an outstanding text linking community and personal agendas to the larger consumer market substitute.

0Comment One person found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Great ideas for developing community

ByGayle Rodgerson February 2, 2013

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This book discusses the negative effects we are experiencing due to the fact that we are a consumer society. Buying things does not make us happier. The authors get into what we need to do to create a more satisfied life and it is often in our own neighborhood and community. Even though they discussed "community" on a broad level, many of the suggestions and stories can be applied in my neighborhood community. I especially like the idea of people sharing their skills and interests (gifts) with their neighbors.

0Comment One person found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Most Recent Customer Reviews

Two Stars

It read a little like a self-help book. Too pollyanna for me.Read more

Published 7 months ago by Amazon Customer

Worth Considering!

This is a promising work on how to get your community working together. Looking at my small hometown I am sceptical, but some of the ideas here are worth a try.Read more

Published 10 months ago by Winterpast Rev

Great vendor

Very happy with the item and the speed in which the product was delivered to me.Read more

Published 10 months ago by Curtis Hanock

Practical advice for collaborating for better neghbourhood

What kind of world do we want to leave for our grandchildren? What kind of neighbourhoods do we want to foster for our children to grow up in?Read more

Published 11 months ago by Darren Cronshaw

A great foundation for our community!

Great book and author! I am active in my community and am using the principles of this book as a guide.Read more

Published 11 months ago by Tony P.

This book is a call to community!

I totally enjoyed this book. It totally changed the way I view my neighbors and my neighborhood! It's time to get to know everyone better and get involved!Read more

Published 1 year ago by bq3

A Vivid and Compelling Picture of What Is vs. What Could Be for Our Local Communities

This is a stellar book from the first page of the Introduction all the way to the resources and individuals in the appendix.Read more

Published 1 year ago by Joel Zaslofsky

This book is SO GOOD. There is only one copy at our local ...

This book is SO GOOD. There is only one copy at our local library, but I think that there should be hundreds of copies because everyone in America needs to read this book!Read more

Published 1 year ago by Amy Putkonen

Five Stars

Everyone working on poverty issues should read this Read more

Published 1 year ago by Amazon Customer

I just ordered three copies, one for each new ...

I just ordered three copies, one for each new staff person. (I already have my own dog-eared copy.) If you care about neighborhoods, this is a must read.Read more

Published on May 26, 2015 by Center for Transforming Communities

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway

This item: The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods

Set up a giveaway

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.